History
In July 1997, a consortium of Slovenian companies and the Swedish telecommunications operator Telia launched Si.mobil that was renamed to A1 Slovenija in 2017. Just a year after its establishment, A1 Slovenija and the then Minister of Transport and Communications Anton Bergauer signed a 15-year agreement on the license for providing GSM 900 services. At the end of 1998, the technical team made the first ever test call in the 040 network. On 25 March 1999, A1 Slovenija entered the market commercially and by the end of the year it had gained the trust of its first 10,000 customers. With this Slovenia got its second mobile operator, and users benefitted from the option of selecting their mobile service provider, while the telecommunication market was a step closer to greater liberalization.
The entry of a new player into the mobile market brought about a great change in the telecommunications environment. For the first time in 8 years the incumbent mobile operator was facing competition. The mobile market penetration at that time was 35.8 %.
A1 Slovenija began actively constructing its own network. Its first GSM exchange in Ljubljana had a capacity of 30,000 connections, with the option of upgrading to 150,000 customers. A1 Slovenija constructed its second exchange in Maribor. From its modest beginnings with two exchanges, A1 Slovenija has grown into an operator with a state-of-the-art 3G network which is the biggest in the country, covering over 95 % of the Slovenian population and providing access to broadband internet.
With technological development, the range of A1 Slovenija's services has become ever more diverse, and A1 Slovenija was the first operator to introduce some of the services in its portfolio to the Slovenian market, including GPRS packet data transfer and WAP service. A1 Slovenija's customers were also the first ones to be able to send multimedia messages. A1 Slovenija was the first operator in Slovenia and one of the first ones in Europe which supported data transfer with EDGE technology. A1 Slovenija was also a pioneer in the field of GPS navigation services on mobile phones.
In 2011, A1 Slovenija carried out an extensive upgrade of its network, which now covers over 98 % of the Slovenian population with broadband internet. This led to A1 Slovenija obtaining a certificate for the bigggest and fastest Slovenian 3G network. Even though A1 Slovenija has covered the majority of Slovenia with UMTS 900 technology, the network upgrade continues. A1 Slovenija was the first operator in Slovenia offering commercial LTE services, the 4th generation network that supports data rates of up to 150 Mbit/s.
At the end of 2000, A1 Slovenija had 130,000 customers, while by the end of 2002 their number had already climbed to 350,000. The growth in users was also the result of an exclusive partnership with the global company Vodafone, which brought the biggest advantages to A1 Slovenija in regard to international roaming and use of new services, and the support of the majority owner mobilkom austria in the form of investments and knowledge sharing. When the market became saturated, the steep growth in users slowed down, however the number of A1 Slovenija's customers keeps growing and at the end of 2015, A1 Slovenija had 708,536 customers.
Today, A1 Slovenija is one of the first mobile operators in Europe and the first mobile operator in Slovenia which provides its business customers with business solutions in addition to communication services. It is one of the most reputable employers, and a family friendly enterprise. Numerous achievements, growth in operations, satisfied customers, numerous awards, and an environmental certificate show that A1 Slovenija has become a mature company.
