DNA traces its beginnings to the "Suomen 3P" mobile phone operations division of the Finnet (fi) group of telephone cooperatives (of which the latter was originally founded in 1921 as a grouping of the over 400 privately owned telephone cooperatives which then existed in Finland in competition with the Finnish PTT agency (fi)) after there was a split-up in the association.

The Helsinki Telephone Association (now Elisa Oyj) left Finnet and they needed to find a new owner, which they did in 2001.

In 2012, DNA challenged a long-time dominated Digita Oy in the Finnish terrestrial television network markets, and construction of its own competing digital-terrestrial television network with DVB-T2 technology.

In 2014, DNA and Sonera (now Telia Finland) established a joint venture company called Suomen Yhteisverkko Oy, of which its purpose is to build and deploy a shared 4G LTE mobile network in remote Northern and Eastern Finland using the 800 MHz (LTE Band 20) "digital dividend" band.

[5] In 2016, the lower-cost MVNO Moi Mobiili started operations using the DNA/Yhteisverkko mobile network.