The head of TeliaSonera said his company was leading the charge towards a new sustainable business model as he unveiled falling profits for the first three months of 2012.

The Sweden-based operator increased revenues by three percent year-on-year to €2.9 billion between January and March.

However, profits fell by 18 percent to €486 million despite capex falling.

Sales were up in both its mobility and Eurasian business units, but remained flat in broadband services.

President and CEO Lars Nyberg said changing customer behavior highlighted the need for the company to develop its business models and how it charged for services going forward.

“We have been in the forefront stating that while prices for voice will continue to come down there must be a stronger correlation between usage and pricing of data,” he said.

“We have been early in introducing tiered pricing of data, lower costs for data roaming and recently openly communicated that we will start to charge for mobile VoIP.”

Customers in Spain will have to pay for mobile VoIP “within a month” while new subscribers in Sweden will begin to be charged “during the summer”.

The total number of subscriptions the group holds has increased to 172.4 million.

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