Swedish telecommunications company TeliaSonera AB (TLSN.SK) Thursday said it has lowered data roaming charges for its customers traveling within the Nordic and Baltic countries by 90%, a move that the company's chief executive Lars Nyberg said is likely to hurt profit in the short run.

Telia will charge SEK29 ($4.60) a day, for 20 megabytes of data traffic within the Nordic and Baltic countries for the company's mobile telephony subscribers. TeliaSonera previously charged SEK22.30 for every megabyte of data roaming within the Nordic countries.

"For some time I've been embarrassed by the cost of data roaming for our customers," Nyberg said at a press briefing in Stockholm on Thursday.

Nyberg said that data roaming charges, which operators levy on customers for using mobile Internet abroad, are the cause of much uncertainty which puts them off using the service at all. Moreover he said that the prices that operators charge for roaming are "astronomical" compared with the cost of providing the service.

"I don't mind making money, but I don't like stealing it," Nyberg said.

The issue of data pricing is a key one for operators across Europe, as they struggle to overcome the decline in revenue of fixed-line and mobile voice services. They also face increased competition and regulation that has slashed the cost of text messaging for consumers and lowered the fees operators can charge eachother to connect customers of rival carriers to their networks.

Amid the proliferation of mobile data caused by surging demand for smartphones, carriers are also investing heavily in faster networks, while some have even called for the major content providers that generate most traffic, such as Google Inc. (GOOG), to be charged for using them.

Nyberg, however, appears more sanguine on the issue.

According to the chief executive, the lower roaming tariff will initially hurt TeliaSonera's earnings, but he is a "firm believer" that shareholders will benefit from the price cuts in the long run as more subscribers use mobile Internet.

"It turns out that we charged 10 times more for a voice minute 15 years ago than we do today, but we make much more money today," he said.

TeliaSonera doesn't break out how much it earns from roaming charges, but talking to Dow Jones Newswires, Nyberg said cutting prices for data roaming will knock its profit by "maybe SEK100 million to SEK200 million" in the short term.

In the first quarter, Teliasonera's net profit was SEK4.65 billion on sales of SEK24.73 billion.

Nyberg said that his peers in the Nordics region share TeliaSonera's concern about roaming prices and are likely to follow suit. Teliasonera's largest rivals in the region are Telenor AS (TEL.OS), Tele2 AB (TEL2-B.SK), Elisa Oyj (ELI1V.HE) and TDC A/S (TDC.KO).

"I think that the position TeliaSonera takes on this issue is a clear message to the industry that they have got to follow," he said, adding that he isn't afraid of starting a price war.

"We have set a low bar. However, I think the prices we have set for data roaming are in accordance with what customers think is fair to pay and I'm sure that we can make money at this price level providing we increase our volumes," he said.

-By Sven Grundberg, Dow Jones Newswires; +46-8-5451-3098; sven.grundberg@dowjones.com