Telia Lietuva will spend EUR 7.1 million to expand its 5G network and upgrade 500 base stations, one of the largest single radio-access investments the Lithuanian operator has announced to date.

The programme covers both new 5G coverage and the modernisation of existing sites. According to the operator, 500 base stations will be upgraded as part of the plan, which is intended to extend next-generation mobile broadband to more users across Lithuania while improving capacity and throughput on the existing footprint.

The investment lands in a market where Lithuanian operators have been racing to widen 5G availability since spectrum assignments allowed full-scale deployments. Telia Lietuva, the local arm of the Nordic-Baltic Telia group, has positioned itself as the country's mobile infrastructure leader, and the EUR 7.1 million commitment fits that strategy of pushing coverage beyond the main cities into less densely served areas.

For subscribers, the practical outcome is straightforward: more places where a 5G signal is available and stronger performance on sites that already carry traffic. Site upgrades of this kind typically replace older radio equipment with modern units that support higher-order MIMO and better spectrum efficiency, which translates into higher peak and average throughput and more headroom during busy hours.

The vendor side of the rollout was not specified in the announcement, leaving open whether the upgrades consolidate an existing supplier relationship or split work across multiple radio vendors. Telia group companies elsewhere in the Baltics and Nordics have historically drawn on a small pool of major RAN suppliers for comparable modernisation projects.

Commercially, the move reflects a pattern seen across the Baltic region: operators are past the initial 5G launch phase and now focused on densification and quality of coverage, since early deployments concentrated in Vilnius, Kaunas and other urban centres. Rural and regional coverage has become the competitive frontier, and regulators in the region have pushed operators toward broader geographic obligations tied to their spectrum licences.

The EUR 7.1 million budget also signals measured rather than aggressive spending. It is a targeted modernisation effort aimed at a defined set of 500 sites, not a nationwide network rebuild. That scale suggests Telia Lietuva expects incremental coverage and capacity gains per euro spent, consistent with a mature market where subscriber growth is limited and differentiation comes from network quality and fixed-mobile convergence rather than land-grab expansion.

Customers with 5G-capable handsets in upgraded areas should notice the difference first, as modernised sites come online progressively through the rollout period. The operator has not published a detailed site-by-site schedule, so the pace of visible improvements will depend on how quickly the 500 upgrades proceed.

The investment follows Telia Lietuva's broader capex trajectory of steady network investment rather than large cyclical bursts, an approach the company has maintained through recent financial years.

Telia Lietuva says the upgraded network will deliver improved mobile experience across Lithuania as the expansion progresses, with the full benefit of the 500-site programme expected as deployments are completed.