About our History
More than 155 years of accumulated experience within telecommunications, coupled with a pioneering spirit and a quest for knowledge and development – are what have brought Telenor to where it is today. Telenor Group has mobile operations in 11 markets around the world and in additionally 19 markets through our 31,67 per cent ownership in VimpelCom Ltd. Go ahead and explore our history – in text, film and pictures.
View the Telenor History
Duration: 5:01
1899
Members of the Norwegian Storting (Parliament) photographed in June 1905.
Cable laying in Prinsensgate in Christiania (Oslo),1895.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
Table telephone dating from 1893, produced by Elektrisk Bureau, Norway. The receiver can be adjusted to fit both large and small heads.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
Impregnation of telephone poles in 1899, Namsos.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
- The Telegraph Act is passed, giving the state exclusive rights to run telephone services. The Norwegian state is authorized to take over the private telephone companies. This process lasted until 1974.
1893
From the opening of the telephone connection between Norway and Sweden in 1893.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
The telephone that belonged to King Oscar II of Norway-Sweden, dating from 1894.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
The main parade street, Karl Johans Gate in Christiania (Oslo), with the Grand Hotel in the foreground, taken around 1880.
- The first international telephone line connects Kristiania (Oslo), Norway with Stockholm, Sweden.
1881
A telegraph operator photographed in Skien, Norway, in 1898.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
A telegram, dated 1865.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
- The Norwegian government passes the Monopolies Act, which gives the state exclusive rights to convey messages by means of telegraph lines and similar installations.
1880
Norway's first telephone directory was printed in Morgenbladet, 20 November 1880
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
- Norway’s first official telephone exchange opens.
1878
Line workers receiving their wages, outside Arendal (Southern Norway) around 1917.
Photo: P.B. Melås, privatly owned
- The Norwegian cities of Arendal and Tvedestrand are connected via telephone cables.
1877
Alexander Graham Bell at the opening of the long-distance line between New York and Chicago in 1892. He received a patent for the telephone in 1876.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
- The first known public demonstration of the Bell telephone in Norway takes place.
1870
The telegraph line in Pasvikdalen, Finnmark is inspected with the help of reindeer transport.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
- Telegraphy reaches Vardø in the far north of Norway, thereby securing nationwide coverage.
1869
'From Pentonville Road looking west: evening', by John O'Connor (1884)
Photo: Painting by John O'Connor
- The telegraph cable connection between Norway and Great Britain opens.
1867
Ostergade seen from Amagertorv, Copenhagen 1865.
Photo: Unknown
- The telegraph cable connection between Norway and Denmark opens.
1855
Norway's first Telegraph Director, Carsten Tank Nielsen, photographed in the 1880s.
Photo: Norwegian Telecom Museum
- The Norwegian Telegraph Administration opens its first telegraph line, between Christiania (Oslo) and the city of Drammen.
- The Norwegian Telegraph Administration is founded.
1853
A typical morse telegraph receiver dating from the 1870s.
Photo: Cato Normann /Norwegian Telecom Museum
Christiania (Oslo), photographed in the 1850s, with Trefoldighet Church in the background.
Photo: Unknown
- Norway’s first telegraph cable connection is opened along the railway tracks between Strømmen and Christiania (Oslo).