Finland’s nationwide copper-wire telephone network fell silent on Tuesday after operator Elisa permanently deactivated the service, leaving only a few thousand local subscribers on limited regional lines. The final symbolic call connected Elisa’s chief executive in London with the head of Finland’s transport and communications agency in Helsinki, who closed the conversation with the Finnish farewell “kuulemiin” — “speak later.” Elisa, the last major operator maintaining a public switched telephone network, had already ceased selling new fixed-line contracts years ago and retained only a few thousand customers at the time of the shutdown.

Viewed from Helsinki, the retirement formalises a shift decades in the making. Finland’s landline network, operational since the 1880s, saw household subscriptions peak in the early 1990s before the rapid ascent of mobile technology — driven in part by domestic giant Nokia — eroded demand. Competitors Telia and DNA had already withdrawn their fixed-line services in 2019 and early 2026 respectively. Finland now joins Estonia, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain, which have phased out analogue public networks in favour of fibre-optic infrastructure capable of carrying both voice and data.

The transition away from copper is not confined to Europe. In Manila, regulators approved the commercial launch of Starlink Direct-to-Cell through Globe Telecom, making the Philippines the first Southeast Asian market to deploy the satellite-to-mobile service. The technology connects compatible smartphones directly to more than 650 low-Earth orbit satellites, bypassing terrestrial towers to deliver SMS, voice calls and mobile data. Globe said the service targets the estimated 4 percent of Filipinos outside the reach of conventional mobile networks and will function as a backup during the typhoons and earthquakes that frequently disrupt ground infrastructure.

After the Elisa shutdown, Finland’s remaining fixed-line provision falls to small local operators serving a few thousand subscribers for local calls only, public broadcaster Yle reported. In the Philippines, Globe’s satellite roaming service is initially available on supported Android LTE devices with an active Globe SIM, with no roaming charges applied. The National Telecommunications Commission framed the approval as advancing the government’s goal of inclusive digital transformation.