Walked by this utility station the other day. Regular readers will know that I am always on the lookout for these stations, wherever I happen to be in the world. As far as I can remember, it’s the only original, old-school utility station that I’ve ever seen in over 25 years of living in Malmö. I love the design and above all, the old logo relief on top and on the manhole below.

There was no posting on it, and therefore only interesting as a relic of Televerket, the precursor of today’s Telia, Sweden’s partially state-owned telecom company. When I moved to Sweden in 1978, Televerket was a monopoly and omnipresent in society. With a fleet of bright orange vans and an army of orange-clad technicians, there was no shortage of critique and jokes about Televerket’s notoriously bad customer service which some would argue is only marginally better today. To a degree, I think the monopolistic mentality is still alive and kicking.

Here’s a little Televerket-to-Telia background (courtesy of ChatGPT):

Televerket was a Swedish telecommunications company that was in operation from 1853 to 1993. It was established as a government agency and was responsible for managing all aspects of Sweden’s telecommunications infrastructure, including telegraphs, telephones, and radio communications. In the 1980s, Televerket began to face competition from other telecom companies, and in 1993 it was restructured and transformed into the modern telecommunications company Telia. Today, Telia is one of the largest telecom companies in the Nordic region, providing a wide range of services including mobile and fixed-line telephony, broadband internet, and digital TV.