“With his extensive experience from retail business, Mats will be a good sparring partner for Liquid Barcodes’ customers. One of his main tasks will be to further develop Liquid’s solutions in order to increase traffic to the stores and drive sales. Mats is a leader with the ability to inspire, motivate and create results – qualities that are crucial to a company that represents a priority area in Telenor,” said Svein Henning Kirkeng, head on eCommerce in Telenor Digital Services.

Mats Danielsen has a Master in Business and Economics and has held positions in Statoil Fuel & Retail (SFR), Accenture as well as in the Royal Norwegian Air Force. In SFR Danielsen experience includes responsibility for European retail sales and operations across eight markets – Scandinavia, the Baltics, Poland and Russia.

A market in growth

“As a retailer, I see that the mobile phone provides unique opportunities for customer interaction and increased sales. With its strong team of skilled employees, Liquid Barcodes is well positioned in a market that I think will see significant growth the next few years,” said Mats Danielsen.

Over the past few years Liquid Barcodes has helped its customers to carry out several hundred coupons and loyalty campaigns. Today, the company has customers throughout Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

“Liquid’s solutions with coupons that are scanned at the check-out counter in the shops are easy to use for both customers and employees. The coupons are unique and fully traceable, which makes it possible to distribute more personalized and relevant offers,” concluded Mats Danielsen.

Coupons have been a widespread marketing tool for quite some time, but in Norway promotional gifts were first permitted in 2009. This means that Norway is still an immature coupon market, but at the same time, a significant portion of the country’s coupons are most likely to be distributed directly on mobile phones.

The advantage of using the mobile phone is that you always carry it with you. Through digital solutions it’s easier to create personalized offers, ensure more efficient distribution of these offers and gain better understanding of user behaviour. In addition, other related services on the mobile can be offered, such as punch cards, gift vouchers, bonus cards, loyalty cards, etc.

About Liquid Barcodes

Liquid Barcodes delivers complete solutions for mobile digital coupons and digital loyalty cards in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. The company has about 10 employees. Annual turnover for 2012 was around NOK 10 million. The company is based in Oslo.

“A revised Anti-Corruption Policy was implemented in Telenor in 2012. To aid in implementation, our Anti-Corruption Handbook provides a guide on how to deal with issues such as gifts, events and representations, facilitation payments, public authorities and middlemen and business partners,” says Pål Wien Espen and continues…

“The new Anti-Corruption Handbook is available on Telenor’s intranet WoW and on our external website www.telenor.com. All employees shall have the Handbook available, take part in Anti-Corruption training programmes and other implementation activities. The Handbook provides an answer to frequently asked questions, or where to seek advice when in doubt. The Handbook is a practical tool to help each employee to follow Telenor’s ethical values and formal policies and to make the right decisions.”

See video-interview with Telenor’s Head of Legal and Compliance Pål Wien Espen on the new Anti-Corruption Handbook.

“What is Telenor’s stance on corruption and bribery?”

“Telenor is firmly opposed to corruption in all forms. For Telenor, anti-corruption is not only a legal obligation and an ethical standpoint. Corruption is a threat to business and society in all countries. It undermines legitimate business activities and distorts competition. It ruins reputation and exposes individuals to risks. Telenor has zero tolerance on corruption and is committed to doing business in accordance with the highest ethical standards.”

“How does Telenor secure that this policy is known and lived up to throughout the group?”

“At Telenor, we regard top-level commitment to our anti-corruption work as vital for establishing an open and transparent enterprise-wide culture in which bribery is unacceptable. Top-level management is committed to sending clear, unambiguous and regular messages to all staff and business partners that corruption and bribery is unacceptable. Telenor’s Board of Director’s has also established an Ethics and Sustainability Committee which supports the Board in fulfilling its responsibilities with respect to ethics and compliance.”

“Are policies and top-level commitment enough to ensure that all employees and persons acting on behalf of Telenor actually commit to these high standards?”

“Commitment from Management and Board of Directors is crucial. However – at Telenor we are all responsible for understanding the important legal and ethical issues that affect our business and for acting with integrity at all times. Integrity means complying with both the spirit and the letter of the law and regulations that governs our industry. Telenor’s ethical standards are set out in our Code of Conduct and governing documents, to which all employees and business partners must adhere. We call this “The Telenor Way Framework.”

“What does the Anti-Corruption framework regulate?”

“Telenor Group has implemented an Anti-Corruption Programme rooted in Telenor’s Code of Conduct and the Group Policy Anti-Corruption. Among the elements are requirements for implementation of the programme, risk assessments and monitoring, reporting and regular training of all employees. Our Anti-Corruption Handbook provides a practical tool describing what each employee needs to know, what they must do and what they need to be aware of in different situations and dilemmas.”

“How can for instance an employee know if a business arrangement is to be seen as corruption or not?”

“Corruption takes many forms. It is commonly understood that transferring a large amount of cash to a government official or a middleman in order to secure a license or a contract is a bribe. But there are other payments and business arrangements, such as relationship-based business practices, that can be more difficult to categorize, at least in countries where the business culture may be different. All our employees need to know how to navigate such grey areas that may not be illegal, but still not in compliance with Telenor’s policies. Our guidelines shall help each employee to make the right decisions. When in doubt, the clear advice is: seek advice from your superior or Local Legal.”

“What can an employee in Telenor do if he or she has any concerns whether an illegal or unethical action has taken place?”

“All employees may report any concerns to the Local Ethics & Compliance Manager, or Telenor Group’s compliance functions at the “Hotline to Compliance”. According to Telenor’s Code of Conduct, reporting shall be treated confidentially.”

“How does Telenor check the integrity of business partners?”

“We recognize that our business partners will be associated with Telenor. It is crucial to ensure that a business partner is reputable and not engaged in corrupt or fraudulent activities. All engagements with business partners, whether joint venture partners, agents, consultants, middlemen and other intermediaries who act as a point of contact between Telenor and a third party, shall undergo an integrity due diligence. The integrity due diligence shall cover anti-corruption.”

“Telenor is engaged in countries ranking high on corruption perception indexes. How does Telenor deal with doing business in such countries, without compromising on Telenor’s zero-tolerance policy?”

“Telenor’s governing documents sets one single standard which shall govern all business activities, regardless of where such activities take place. That said, it is not possible to achieve implementation of Telenor’s policies without addressing local differences. All Business Units have therefore a responsibility to assess local risks and challenges. Local policies and manuals shall address how such risks shall be managed in accordance with Telenor’s zero tolerance-policy.”

“How does Telenor enforce compliance with Telenor’s standards?”

“We work systematically to uncover any non-compliance. Telenor carries the responsibility of taking such action as it considers appropriate to investigate any suspected violations or breaches of applicable laws and Telenor’s Code of Conduct. If a violation has in fact occurred, Telenor will take such disciplinary or preventive actions as it deems appropriate,” concludes Pål Wien Espen, EVP and Head of Group Legal and Compliance.

Read Telenor’s new Anti-Corruption Handbook

Read Telenor’s Code of Conduct

TriNet is an intelligent network with the ability to switch between the three frequencies, automatically selecting the frequency that best suits customers’ network usage at the moment. With these unique capabilities in the market, dtac is taking the lead in defining the new industry standard.

“This is the perfect moment for us to enter the new era since everything comes together – our network is ready to serve new customer demands, a wide range of devices are available and affordable for all, the industry has transitioned from concession to license, we have the world’s best technology in our network, and we are ready for content services and maintain a strong customer centricity strategy,” said Jon Eddy Abdullah, CEO, during the TriNet launch event.

Internet for all

Upon the launch of TriNet, dtac introduced the new slogan ‘Internet for All’, which derives from the commitment to bring internet access across the country. dtac aims to contribute to the creation of a better future in which the Thai people have equal access to information and opportunity. In addition, dtac has launched a new service offering called ‘More Choice’, allowing customers to match call and data packages based on their usage.

The commercial launch of 3G on 2.1 GHz will be in June. dtac is now in the final stage of testing the network to ensure the best and most seamless service. 5,000 base stations will be installed by end of 2013, giving dtac the capacity to serve growing customer demand that is expected  to lead to company’s 3G subscriber base rising from 3.5 million to 10 million this year.

Alternative to pirated music

Together with Deezer, Telenor has been a first mover launching music streaming in our regions in Asia as a legal alternative to pirated music.

“The business units have done a great job working with artists and running events to create engagement around the music service. After only a few months in operation, more than 250.000 subscriptions with music have been sold,” Gunnar Sellæg, Senior Vice President Commercial Development, Telenor Digital Services.

Local music

One important task has been to help establish an attractive local music repertoire. Local music dominates in most markets. In Sweden 80 per cent of the top 10 albums is domestic and in India 90 per cent of the popular music is regional.

Music makes happy customers

“Today, the music streaming service is usually bundled with the access. We believe music build customer relationship, create loyalty and may help fight price erosion. Just like Twitter and YouTube is building dedicated services to increase customer loyalty (YouTube Vevo and music.twitter.com) have a positive branding effect using music,” said Hans Jevanord, Director & Group Head of music streaming services.

Today, when our customers want to relax, or want to share an experience with their friends they tend to turn to their mobile and music. Music and mobile goes hand-in-hand. Music is among the first premium content services to be bundled with our access services. Music drives demand for fast broadband and the enormous popularity of devices and headphones.

In Norway Telenor and djuice just recently launched a music offering with Wimp.

More facts:

• Global music sales up 3 per cent in 2012 – for the first time in 13 years
• Music fuels engagement
  9 of the 10 most liked people on FB are artists
  7 of the 10 most followed people on twitter are artists
• Subscription services are the fastest-growth area in digital music. Sub base gained 44 per cent in 2013 and revenues rose 59 per cent in the first half of the year (IFPI report 2013).

Deezer facts

Dezeer’s aim is to help people enjoy music unconstrained by any barriers of the past, providing access to a catalogue of 20 million tracks, instantly available on smartphones, tablets and PCs.

Deezer first established in France in 2006, same year as Spotify and four years before Wimp. It allows users to listen to music on various devices online or offline. Their expansion has been faster than any other digital music service. Telenor Digital Services did an extensive comparison and in 2012 concluded on Deezer for CEE and Asia.

Today you can reach the service directly through web, without downloading a client. This makes it convenient for many users streaming using the service on PC’s they borrow. But, the real growth comes on mobile. Deezer reports that 60 per cent of its new subscriptions are generated using mobile phones.

See video interview with Deezer CEO, Axel Dauches from this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Read more about Deezer on their website

Initially, 4T will focus on SMS payments and will later allow mobile customers to pay for goods online by entering their phone number instead of a credit card number. Near Field Communication will be part of the solution in the long term.

”Smartphones are about to become the next payment vehicle. Even now many Danes buy bus and parking tickets by using their mobile phones. 4T will drive progress towards advanced mobile payment solutions that will simplify the Danish daily life without compromising security,” says Marek Slacik, CEO Telenor Denmark.

The CEO of the new joint venture explains the future plans.

“We start out by putting focus on mobile payments as we know it today; bus and train tickets, parking tickets and voting by SMS, all of which can be done with SMS or apps, where the amount is deducted on the phone bill or the customer’s bank account. The next phase is mobile payment in eCommerce. Instead of having to enter a 16-digit credit card number, expiration date and security code, you will be able to enter the mobile number, confirm the deal with a PIN code and money is drawn from the bank account,” says Peter Bredgaard, CEO of the newly formed 4T.

In order for it to become possible to use smartphones instead of cash when buying goods in actual stores, smartphones with NFC technology have to become more common among Danish mobile customers. In addition, the retail-segment has to acquire and provide NFC-ready terminals, enabling customers to pay with their smartphones.

The initiative is welcomed by Coop Danmark A/S, Denmark’s leading consumer goods retailer, which operates several retail chains. In April, Coop said it will offer mobile payment solutions in all their 1200 outlets within one year.

By partnering with Telenor Connexion, KDDI will now be able to offer its customers a one-stop-shop solution for overseas deployment including M2M monitoring and management.

Under the agreement Telenor Connexion – which is part of Telenor Digital Services – will provide KDDI with a full business setup including access to Telenor’s vast roaming network in more than 190 countries, a global SIM as well as service provisioning and technical support 24/7.

Strengthens Connexion’s position in Japan

”KDDI has a longstanding reputation for quality and reliability and a proven M2M track record in Japan. Hence, the partnership with KDDI is a seal of approval of our end-to-end solution and comprehensive support. And it further strengthens our position in the important Japanese market,” said Per Simonsen, CEO of Telenor Connexion and Head of M2M in Digital Services.

”Through partnering with Telenor Connexion KDDI is now ideally positioned to be a one-stop global M2M solution provider to our customers. The high quality of Telenor Connexion’s dedicated and reliable connectivity services as well as their proven track record of more than 15 years of experience in the M2M and telematics field were decisive factors. The competence and capacity to meet the needs of KDDI were impressive,” said Akihiko Yamaguchi, manager, KDDI.

KDDI’s global M2M offering will be launched in May 2013.

Uninor is the first telecom service provider in the world to get this certification. This recognition stands as a testimony of Uninor’s commitment towards Social Accountability and Corporate Social Responsibility. It highlights the attention given to human rights in the workplace and providing the staff with safe and ethical work practices.

“Organizations often forget about their responsibility towards the internal members and society at large, in the pursuit of business and competitive success. We have always taken pride in providing our employees with productive and conducive work environments which adheres to the highest standard of work ethics and global best practices,” said Sumit Sharma, Chief HR Officer of Uninor.

After an extensive certification audit at Andhra Pradesh, UP West, Bihar & Jharkhand Circles and Corporate Office by the British Standards Institute, the auditors found Uninor in compliance with the strict norms laid down by SAI. It goes to portray how the organization works towards employee satisfaction, retention and maintains social responsibility standards internally and across its vast supply chain.

“The SA8000 certification of Uninor is a great achievement for Uninor and an honor to the Telenor Group. The third party certificate by BSI is a testimony of our commitment towards human rights, health and safety and responsible business practices. This focus also matters to our owners and other stakeholders. This is a milestone on our sustainability journey,” said Eric Ekern, Vice President Business Assurance in Telenor Group, who was also present on the occasion of the award ceremony at the Uninor’s Corporate Office shares.

Venkataram Arabolu, Managing Director of BSI India said on the occasion, “Uninor is a unique company that has once again demonstrated its sincerity to be a socially responsible corporate citizen by ensuring its employees are not exploited. Achieving the certification to the exacting demands of SA 8000 is proof that Uninor is a company that will grow to be the Best in Class. I am particularly impressed to note that, despite being in an industry sector where the priority is one of business, Uninor has found it important to use these good practices of employee protection. The top level commitment to sustainability is amply evident and that is so refreshing and needless to state, this is what drives an organisation to greatness, and Uninor is definitely on this path”.

Facts

The SA8000® standard spans industry and corporate codes to create a common language for measuring social compliance. Companies seeking to comply with SA8000® have to adopt policies and procedures that protect the basic human rights of workers. This management system supports sustainable implementation of the principles of SA8000®: child labor, forced and compulsory labor, health and safety, freedom of association and right to collective bargaining, discrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours, remuneration and is in line with the Telenor way of work.

“I am pleased to present Telenor Group’s Sustainability Report for 2012. This report demonstrates how we work to ensure that sustainability is an integral part of everything we do,” says Jon Fredrik Baksaas, President and CEO of Telenor Group. “While our strategy remains unchanged, we see that new developments require us to stay vigilant and responsive. This is important both in addressing emerging challenges and in maximising our opportunities.”

Telenor’s Annual Report for 2012, which is also issued today, and Telenor’s Sustainability Report provide an overview of Telenor’s results in terms of financial, social and environmental performance.

“In this report Telenor seeks to address issues of importance to our external stakeholders and our own business operations. It is our aim to be open about the challenges we face operating in an international environment as well as the achievements we made during 2012,” says Mai Oldgard, Vice president and Head of Corporate Responsibility, at Telenor Group.

Read the 2012 Sustainability Report

Learn more about Corporate Responsibility in Telenor Group

The spread of mobile internet services worldwide has occurred at a rapid pace. This expansion is changing millions of people’s lives, with mobile devices providing unprecedented voice, video and social media communication capabilities and instant access to a vast range of information and entertainment services.

In the process, mobile internet access is also rapidly becoming part of life for children and young people. This brings with it substantial benefits, but also risks. What this means is that if the gains of mobile internet for children are to be reaped while mitigating the risks, companies, governments and other stakeholders need to work closely together.

As a result, Telenor, as one of the world’s major mobile operators, has called stakeholders to take action by commissioning the study in cooperation with Boston Consulting Group.

“Parents,  educators, civil servants, and service providers need to work together to help reduce risks and build resilience in our youth,” says Telenor’s Ola Jo Tandre.  “Telenor intends to take a position, invite broad cooperation and contribute to the development of mitigating actions to reduce online risks for young people.”

The study delves into various chapters covering everything from the growing access to mobile internet services, the risk posed to children by mobile internet services, the fact that risk and resilience varies across the world  as well as how to build resilience and reduce risk to minimise harm. The report shows that stakeholders have diverse roles to play and that telecoms companies are already playing an important role, however that telecoms companies can still do much to reduce the risks.

Download Telenor report – Building Digital Resilience

“Norway is very far from Thailand but we have something in common,” Giske said during his visit with dtac. “We have the same excellent company to provide excellent services to Thai people.”

Enabling next generation technology with ease
Upon the full upgrade of its nationwide network on the 850 MHz frequency band, dtac has built a strong foundation for its network, enabling next generation technology with ease. dtac is also preparing for the launch of 3G services on the 2.1 GHz frequency band, which will happen in Q2 2013.

“With easy access to 3G services, all Thai people will be able to enjoy the benefits that come with high-speed Internet. High-speed data connectivity represents a new opportunity for Thai industry to pursue new business development, supporting growth in commercial activities and fuelling the economy in every part of the country,” said Jon Eddy Abdullah.

Customers in focus in 2013
Currently, dtac owns the largest number of base stations in Thailand, totaling more than 15,000. The company says that they will continue to focus on customer centricity in 2013, through its significant investments in the network as well as upcoming new innovative products and services to enhance the customer experience.

“The Thai market is more than ripe for mobile broadband services, as users want to chat, share and post content wherever they go. With nationwide 3G, that opportunity is finally here. We believe in Internet for all, and I am looking forward to seeing dtac complete the implementation of high capacity internet,” said Sigve Brekke, EVP and Head of Asia operations, Telenor Group.

 New banking models

Few of us link Telenor to banking services. The truth however is that Telenor has been part of the financial services industry since 1998. The industry has a highly interesting potential. Both in developing markets, where the banking industry has limited access to the population, and in offering more convenient services over the mobile in more mature markets. Telenor’s Easypaisa is already a successful business model for financial services via mobile. Next potential step for Telenor is developing lending, insurance and saving products.

 Abraham Foss is responsible for Financial Services in Telenor Digital Services and works with the development of new banking models for the Telenor Group. “We are currently developing the opportunities of capitalizing on a lending position, where we would focus on providing small short term loans to those with no previous banking relationships in emerging markets,” adds Foss.

 Foss believes Telenor’s competencies within this area will be developed through two main initiatives: building banking partnerships in each market and the recruitment of experienced bankers.

 Welcomes bank experts to the team

“The Telenor Group already has a considerable infrastructure in these emerging markets, and we see an interesting potential to leverage our Telco assets. However, this also means we will need to build new bank specific competencies. In order to do this we have recruited some of the best heads, that will play a central role in developing Telenor’s position in financial services,” adds Foss.

 This includes new recruits from some of the leading banks in Telenor’s markets such as SEB, Ikano bank and the KBC bank in Serbia. In addition to bank experts joining financial services in DS, several of Telenor’s business units have already, or are also in the process of, recruiting more bank competence. The new banking competence will be important in ensuring a sustainable business model and long-term profitability for the Telenor Group within this area.

 Balancing risk with automation

A growing part of the population in these high potential markets, already has a relationship to Telenor as a mobile operator, and look upon Telco’s in general are as a trusted partner. However, risk management will be important in the development of these services, as a large part of the population that will use these services, do not have a credit history and hence is a new form of risk.

 “To control risk, financial services are currently seeing in which ways we can use our Telco information for credit history scoring. Also, building these products takes time due to regulatory constraints and time-consuming partner relationship building. In the future however we aim for a high level of automation and mass market approach,” Foss finishes off.

Telenor Group together with its London-based agency Pajama Ltd. was nominated for its internal Brand Centre, which is a shared resource of branding tools for all 11 business units and 35,000 employees, in the category “Best Brand Guidelines” along with HSBC. There were many entries for this category, but Transform only shortlisted Telenor Group and HSBC. And Telenor won the Gold award!

Source of inspiration

The Brand Centre has been developed with contributions from many of the employees in several business units across the Telenor world. It is an internal toolbox consisting of guidelines, toolkits, thousands of images, and design elements available to be used freely in all the Telenor companies. It is also a great source of inspiration consisting of updated communication material which everyone can implement and use in their daily work.

“As project manager it has been a great pleasure to see the increased use of the site, and the overwhelming feedback and suggestions we have received from all business units,”  says Elisabeth Gathe, Brand Manager in Group Branding.

Testimony of the innovative and fresh design

The award is a testimony of the Brand Centre’s excellent way of showcasing the new innovative and fresh Telenor design, which is currently being implemented by all business units. Telenor’s design consists of many elements. Some are mandatory, others are created to ensure flexibility. The mix of the elements enables our employees to create a unique and strong brand expression.

“We submitted the Brand Centre which showcases all the new design stretch work and guidelines,’’ says Keshen Teo, Director at Pajama. “The sophistication of the Brand Centre has impressed the judges. With more business units yet to implement the design stretch we see Telenor winning more accolades in the coming year.”

Giske views telecom as key enabler
The Minister showed interest in Grameenphone’s corporate responsibility projects such as Online School and Teledermatology. Giske commented, “The telecom industry has emerged as the key enabler to the socio-economic progress of Bangladesh. I’m happy to see Grameenphone and Telenor Group leading that industry not only in numbers but also with contribution to that development.”

During the visit Sigve Brekke referred to Grameenphone as an important part of Telenor Group and said, “Grameenphone still has a significant role to play in the future development of the industry. The next big challenge is to provide every Bangladeshi with access to affordable data services, but we need a stable and investment friendly regulatory regime.”

Baksaas shares our views with the Prime Minister
The weekend also included a meeting between Telenor CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Trond Giske and the Prime Minister of Bangladesh. Baksaas took the opportunity to share Telenor’s views on the future of the Bangladeshi telecom industry, and how a predictable and investment-friendly framework enables further investment.

“Telenor Group is among the largest foreign investors in Bangladesh. As a long term partner to Bangladesh our commitment has gone beyond just numbers. For 16 years, Telenor Group has played an instrumental role in connecting the unconnected people of the country through our majority ownership in Grameenphone. With our support, Grameenphone has established itself as the industry leader, and the company has always been in the forefront of introducing innovative new services that is having a huge positive impact on improving people’s daily lives, and that strongly contributes to the overall development of the Bangladeshi society,” said Jon Fredrik Baksaas, President and CEO of Telenor Group.

“I believe that Grameenphone has a significant role to play in the future development of the telecommunications sector. The next big challenge is to provide every Bangladeshi with access to affordable data services, but we need a stable regulatory and investment regime characterized by predictability and fairness to be able to make the investments needed to deliver on the country’s ambition. The message to the Government is that if the industry doesn’t get more predictability our ability to make future investment is at risk,” he added.

Access to Internet is the driving force behind the rapid spread of information online, making it easier for a wider audience to follow trends across the globe. If you’re successful in one market, the chances of making it in other countries are greater than ever. The increased competition and innovation among the IT companies is beneficial for Telenor and our customers creating more services to choose from, higher quality and better prices.

Asian apps going global

Examples of Asian mobile apps companies penetrating a global market are Tencent, Kakao and NHN. The latter is a Korean company experiencing great success with the chat app Line passing 100 million mobile users after 19 months in service. Line has been downloaded in 120 countries and is the most downloaded app in over 42 countries including European countries Spain and Switzerland.

dtac – the fastest growing operator on Line

With 1 million followers in less than 11 hours (!), dtac is the fastest growing official account among operators on Line. dtac went live in February and has already surpassed 3 million followers. When you compare that with the 1.2 million ‘likes’ on their Facebook account, it says a lot about the popularity of this service. With 14 million Thai users, Line is huge in Thailand.

“Line as a chat service has become the main communication method for most of us to talk to our circles. It’s very personal, and very direct: people check their Line chat all the time, more than they check Facebook, and they expect messages from their friends, not least marketers,” says  Elizabeth Man, Head of online marketing in dtac. “Our main goal being present on Line is to maintain a close relationship with our customers to remain relevant to target segment of data consumers. It is also a new way of broadcasting our products, offers and promotions.”

A bright Asian future?

The future looks bright for the Asian companies offering innovative digital services. Maybe your next app will be Asian?

Cassette player, CD player, MP3 player: it’s all in a mobile phone

“The Mobile phone has become the preferred streaming device. 60 per cent of streams are now played on a mobile phone, compared to 35 per cent in 2010,” says Arnt Maasø, Associate Professor at the Media and Communication Department of the University of Oslo and one of the participants in the project. Android phones have had tremendous growth, with streaming on this operative system in 2012 getting twice as high as in 2011. However, iPhone and iPad users were early digital music consumers and the iOS (operating system used on iPhone and iPad) still leads: 41% vs. 19% on Android.

Don’t stop the music

Arnt Maasø, Associate Professor at the Media and Communication Department of the University of Oslo

Norwegians listen to music all day long. During the working hours, from 9 am to 3 pm, they rather stream music from their computers, while mobile phone takes over around 3 pm and prevails for the rest of the afternoon, peaking at the time when the majority commutes, making the bus or train ride more fun with headphones on. In the evenings, at home, computers strike back. Somewhere around 10 pm seems to be the best time to explore music and create play lists, and weekends in general.

More search

“Search is getting more important and it’s used more often on mobile than on pc or mac. That is partly because it is so easy on both IOS and Android, thanks to so called “predictive search”. When searching in WIMP on iPhone, it is enough to type in one letter and you will get suggestions for titles, or artists’ names, on Android the suggestions come after three letters. Anyway, it makes it very easy,” Arnt explains. There is a noticeable preference for search among younger people. The research also shows that those who search a lot, also stream much more.

New devices, old stereotypes

Although the devices and the way we listen to music is changing, we’re still frighteningly predictable when it comes to taste for music, genders and age. The majority of avid pop listeners are female, while the majority of listeners who have a strong preference for rock and metal are male.

Someone would argue that it has to do with female nature and need for change or surprise; true or not, we can see that women are less likely to listen to a stream of songs from within the same album than men, and more women listen to songs in ‘shuffle mode’ or in a ‘random‘ sequence.

Those who listen to rock music could also be seen as “old school” types, with tendency to stick to one album more often than listeners of most other genres, especially dance. Most of jazz, folk and classical music listeners are in the age group above 45, and tend to be even more album oriented than rock listeners.

Customers’ consumption of digital services

Music is the first type of content that most people start to consume digitally.

“This research enables us to foresee the patterns in digital consumption of other types of content, like video,” says Arnt, emphasizing that we can expect to find many of the same effects as the ones we experience with music streaming. But there are also clear exceptions. For instance, WiMP users tend not to switch device within a listening session, whereas many users of video streaming tend to start on one device and finish on another, according to studies by Google and Netflix.

“Understanding how music is consumed is highly important for Telenor,” says Johannes Bjelland, one of Telenor’s research scientists involved in the project. Music services are part of our offering to customers, currently through WIMP in the Nordic countries and Deezer in CEE and Asia, often bundled in packages with voice and data. Insight into music consumption is also useful for proper planning of data traffic and networks. For Telenor this will remain an interesting topic that we intend to analyse more, together with Digital Services,” Johannes said.

New research from “Clouds & Concerts” will be conducted in the autumn this year, while the results can be expected at the beginning of 2014.

Largest financial services network in Pakistan

In 2009, Telenor partnered with Tameer Microfinance Bank to roll out easypaisa to provide mobile financial services to Pakistan’s unbanked. Since launch, easypaisa has become the largest financial services network in country, carrying out more than 100 million transactions through its 20,000 shops across 700 cities.  CNN has called easypaisa “the model of the future” and the World Bank´s CGAP labeled easypaisa as the third biggest mobile money service in the world in terms of customers. Last week, in Barcelona easypaisa was again recognized. The service was named as a ‘Mobile Money Sprinter’ in the GSMA’s 2012 Global Money Adoption Survey.

In the video below, Roar Bjaerum, Head of easypaisa Telenor Pakistan, talks about the role of telcos in driving financial inclusion, and some of the reasons for easypaisa’s success:

”If you look at many of the 150 mobile money deployments around the world today, many of them are launched as value-added services. Our approach with easypaisa was to launch this as a totally new business line. That willingness to invest in and build this as a separate business is one of the major differences you find between the ‘sprinters’, as they are called in this survey, and the other operators.”

“The rise of Internet is impacting society, spurring growth, employment, new industry and innovation. Asia is embracing the mobile Internet, but access is still limited. This is the growth we plan to drive,” says Tonne.

Contributing to financial inclusion

Telenor research with Deloitte and BCG suggest a correlation between connectivity and GDP growth. A 10% increase in mobile penetration means 1.2% in GDP growth. A 10% increase in Internet penetration will represent 3-5% of GDP in emerging markets.

“One of the areas in which we see the most potential is mobile financial services. Here we as an industry have the potential to reach out to the 2.5 billion people in the developing world who are without access to banking services. Traditional banking in Asia has a limited reach, whereas we as the mobile provider have a quite far reach,” says Tonne. “It makes you think of growth when we see that 15% of the Pakistani population has access to basic banking services – and 70% have a mobile phone. This is an opportunity that we as an industry will follow,” she adds.

Telenor has already achieved significant results with Easypaisa mobile financial services in Pakistan, and Financial Services is being established as a focused business area in the Group. Telenor’s own research into this area suggests that there is a need for cross-industry collaboration, exchange of best practice and learning, as well as on-going dialogue with regulatory authorities to establish better frameworks.

“Furthermore, the mobile industry is in a position to contribute quite significantly within other services that are important for societal growth. We see that digital services such as mobile healthcare and mobile education can address serious issues in society. Telenor is helping new and expectant mothers in Bangladesh with life-saving information sent via SMS, and campaigns like iChamp in Pakistan are teaching kids, parents and teachers about the positive sides of the mobile Internet,” says Tonne.

Prerequisites for leveraging growth

Telenor does see some prerequisites for leveraging this growth opportunity, including fair and transparent spectrum allocation, regulations that allow for innovative and new operating models, including partnerships among operators and with vendors. With the right framework in place, telecom operators can innovate in terms of new types of services that deliver what people really need in their daily lives.

“We are well-positioned to help make a positive socio-economic impact. Mobile operators are essential building blocks for development, and we plan to continue to have dialogues with governments and regulators to ensure a fair playing field for telecom operators to innovate and enable societies to prosper,” concluded Tonne.

“Satellites are the only possible solution for broadband communication in the Arctic and Northern Regions. Telenor Satellite Broadcasting (TSBc) and the Norwegian Space Centre have therefore established a joint project to review satellite broadband communication for this area,” said Cato Halsaa, Vice President and CEO at TSBc (pictured right). The project “Arctic Satellite Communications” (ASK) has been established to run for two years.

Cato adds that the project is being considered in conjunction with TSBc’s newest satellite, THOR 7, which is due to commence commercial operations in 2014.

Great demand from various industries

Industries including shipping, oil and gas, fishing, tourism, as well as meteorological and environmental monitoring services, have altogether shown particular interest in this Polar Region – on land and at sea.

To find out more about the customer base, many participants from these industries were invited to a seminar hosted by Telenor and Norwegian Space Center. Over a hundred participants told about their requirements beyond the 72nd parallel when the broadband services starts to get poorer.

Providing lifesaving services – and social media

One of the participants, the Trondheim-based company Electro Magnetic Geo Services (EMGS), operates a little beyond the ‘edge’. Their ships sail up to 74.5 degrees north searching for hydrocarbons below the seafloor.

“To us, navigation is especially important. We must be able to register our finds with an accuracy of within 30 metres. For us, broadband will clearly be extremely beneficial with regard to navigation. But it also means our customers will be able to get information from us directly. Today we have to save the data on a hard disk. Sometimes we also have to interrupt the operation and head south to find areas with adequate coverage for transmitting data,” says Hans Christian Juul, Manager Special Projects, Acquisition Department, EMGS.

He adds that broadband coverage in these areas is also important for safety and welfare. “We now have doctors on board. But we also have an arrangement with Haukeland Hospital so that we can call the hospital for consultations. With broadband we could have used a video camera during consultations. I must also add that adequate and secure access via social media is essential for us. As soon as the ships are beyond contact there is a storm of calls to our switchboard. Ensuring that we can provide staff with good communication with the outside world is an important factor that helps us compete for engineers,” said Juul.

To date, no other players have plans ready for broadband coverage in the European Arctic Region.

Make app, win “geek phone”

During the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this week, Telenor announced its partnership with Mozilla and its move towards bringing an open mobile ecosystem to its global business units. The partnership was negotiated by Telenor Digital Services, of which Comoyo is a part. The result of this is that Telenor will launch Firefox OS smartphones, in select markets, during the coming year. The development team at Comoyo, who works closely with Mozilla, wishes to use “The Gathering” to teach young developers how to create apps with HTML5. The latter often cited as the “cornerstone of the open web platform”, compatible with Firefox OS and any other mobile with a browser. This is in contrast to some of the world’s largest mobile brands, where the apps are often “locked” to their mobile platform. Comoyo will invite participants at The Gathering, to join a competition that aims at developing the best HTML5-app for Firefox OS. Ten winners will receive a “Geeksphone”, a phone specially designed for developer-enthusiasts, by a start-up company where the founder himself is a 20-year-old. The competition is to be announced on gathering.org and Comoyo’s developer blog.

“Geek cred”

Today, 70 developers work at Comoyo, a company actively working to attract the brightest heads from different student environments. “We have students working part-time for us, as we are confident that the pulse and ideas they provide us with, are worth gold,” Thaulow adds. Ingrid Ødegaard works with recruiting and developing the Comoyo community. She believes “The Gathering”, is a key arena for Comoyo to generate buzz around products and to engage with next generation developers. “The audience is a mix of computer geek teenagers, students and even adults who are already working. This is a place where the more geek you are, the more you are respected, and this is just the target group we want to interact with. Getting geek cred will help us in convincing these users to try our services and recommend them to peers,” she adds and smiles. Ingrid is looking forward to building Comoyo’s presence at the event and engaging with the group, “We are discussing several cool and fun ideas that we think will be a good match with the audience at The Gathering,” she finishes off. “We look forward to cooperating with an important Norwegian technology company such as Comoyo. This gives the event the direction that we are looking for. Comoyo offers an array of innovative services that participants will be interested to learn more about, and might even help develop in the future,” says Simon Eriksen Valvik, PR-responsible for The Gathering.

Increased expectations to business

“Shared value is at the heart of Telenor Group’s sustainability work. Our job is to focus on what we are good at – providing communications. However, while we aim to create value for Telenor Group we also strive to ensure important benefits for wider society. We have to look at both the positive and negative effects of our business,” said Mai Oldgard.

Corporate ethics and issues relating to the way businesses contribute to society are higher on the agenda than ever. The global financial crisis, Hurricane Sandy, and the Arab Spring, for example, have pushed issues like tax, climate and human rights to the forefront. Business is a powerful player in creating sustainable responses to each of these.

Telecoms can make a difference

At Telenor we experience this international focus in the form of more stringent requirements from governments and international institutions. At the same time telecommunications is a unique tool that can contribute positively in the markets in which we operate.

“Take human rights, where international awareness and expectations for business have developed significantly over the last few years. As a company we continually seek to understand human rights risks related to our business. At Telenor we have recently developed our own set of human rights principles,” Mai explained. “At the same time the mobile can support the realisation and enjoyment of rights, such as access to healthcare.”

“If we take Serbia as our example, we see that the Roma minority there often do not seek professional medical help, and if they do they often meet challenges because they are not officially registered with the authorities. In a partnership between the Ministry of Health, UNICEF and Telenor Serbia mobile technology has enabled almost 130,000 Roma to be registered,” Oldgard continued.

Another way that Telenor works to create Shared Value was in form of cooperation with the city of Oslo. Last year the city started using mobile technology to control its 80,000 street lights in an effort to be more energy efficient. The move can potentially result in an energy savings of 30 to 50 per cent for the municipality, which means less cost as well as lower emissions. “This is a good example of how mobile technology can be climate friendly,” said Oldgard.

We spoke to John Strand, telecom analytic of Strand Consulting and Knut Haakon Nilsen, Telenor TMS Sweden and Denmark who also attended the key note to get their take on the session.

Addressing a packed auditorium, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Dr Nasser CEO of Qtel, Bharti Airtel’s Managing Director Manoj Kohli and Gary Kovacs CEO Mozilla discussed how the industry landscape will evolve as the internet community continues to grow over the coming years and ways in which mobile technology will bridge the digital divide.

Growth will come from Asia and Africa in the next five years, and people will move directly to mobile internet usage when getting connected. Connectivity will not only impact the economy, but also the social and political well-being of any nation. A doubling of internet access in poorer countries in 10 years could create up to 64 million new jobs and help 600 million people climb over the poverty line and bridge the gender gap.

“We are social animals; hence we need to be connected. The world will be only smartphones, over the next five years. The phone needs to be the bank, the educator, my health check-up and my all-in-one accessory for my day-to-day life,” said Bharti Airtel’s Managing Director Manoj Kohli.

Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop said in order to gain access to the digital economy the only thing you will need is a phone number and a digital device.  There are several fundamental challenges that need to be overcome, he said. “We need to provide people affordable ways to access content and data, we need to help people navigate and discover and enjoy content.”

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, the audience is getting a glimpse into a smarter world – the Connected City.

In a constructed urban environment, which features a department store, a hotel, a street, a town hall and a car showroom you’ll find Telenor Connexion alongside companies like Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, KT and AT&T – all presenting their products and ways in which intelligent wireless connections can be used to improve people’s daily lives.

Telenor Connexion, which is part of Telenor Digital Services, has their own stand in this connected venue where they are showcasing M2M services in collaboration with long-term customer, Volvo cars. “One of the things that sets us apart is that we take a lifecycle view when connecting products and services,” says Per Simonsen – watch the interview below featuring him and Andrea Sroczynski.

We know that many of our customers would like to get rid of their physical wallet, and wish for an easier everyday life. The Tap2Pay pilot Telenor has run proves this. The service must be easy and secure. If these criteria are met, people are willing to put their plastic cards in the phone. The demo Telenor is running in Barcelona this week is a natural first step.

“There are so many features and services we want to put in the NFC wallet but we have chosen to focus on payment first. For us as a mobile network operator this is an important strategic development as well as making use of the things we already do every day; distributing SIM-cards and mobile phones to our customers. With this upgrade to NFC enabled phones and SIMs we are ready to let service providers such as banks and transport companies deliver services to their customers,” said Viktoria Erngard. She and Svein Aaser, Chairman of the Telenor Board of Directors comments on today’s announcement – see video below.

NFC more than payment services

In Barcelona Telenor is also showing the NFC Fitness Guide and NFC Presenter, two services developed by students in Tromsø in Norway as part of the Telenor Research project NFC City.

Read more about Easypaisa

Read more about NFC city

“We see a great potential in an open Web-based operating system. With HTML5 at the core of every feature on this phone, you remove barriers to development that are common with existing mobile ecosystems. This opens the door to the wide community of developers, who now have an opportunity to contribute to a new kind of smartphone,” said Baksaas addressing a packed auditorium counting more than 300 journalists and representatives from leading tech sites such as the Verge.Com and Engadget.

Connecting the next two billion to the web

By embracing Firefox’s open Web platform, Telenor aims to provide an even larger part of its customers with the best mobile internet experience possible. Offering affordable devices with applications that are tailored to local needs, Firefox OS will contribute to connecting the next two billion customers to the web.

This cooperation with Mozilla is yet another initiative originating from Telenor Digital Services. We talked to Rolv-Erik Spilling – Head of Digital Services – to get his comments on the partnership and to learn more about Telenor’s rollout plans.

New venue

Last year’s MWC was the largest event ever, with more than 60,000 delegates attending. To cater for the steadily growing numbers of participants, this year’s conference has been moved to a Fira Gran Via – new and larger venue, twice the size of the former Fira at Montjuic.

We will follow the event with articles and video reports, available through a separate Mobile World Congress page where all the MWC updates will be published.

A key driver in this work is to partner with other service providers, such as Facebook, Opera, Deezer, NHN, Twitter and Wikimedia. “It is very important for Telenor to cooperate with big global players like these to get people online and make them discover the benefits of mobile internet,” comments Rolv-Erik Spilling, Executive Vice President and Head of Digital Services.

Facebook (FB) provides clear value to more than one billion users. Given its unique position in terms of size, reach and pull, Facebook has become an important partner for Telenor. Collaboration started in 2011 and the results have not been long in coming. Over the past year, Telenor and our BUs in Asia in particular increased the number of activities with the company, whose biggest growth potential is on mobile.

“Facebook is an extremely popular application in all the markets in which Telenor operates. In Asia, Facebook is often the only reason for our customers to start using mobile data. When we look at what drives Telenor’s revenues, it is primarily growth in mobile data.  Facebook is what gets people online,” says Petter Lee-Johannessen, Telenor’s Global Partnership Manager for Facebook.

Leveraging the Facebook partnership in Thailand

With 18 million Facebook users, Thailand ranks number 14 on the list of countries with the highest numbers of FB users. According to the latest updates, dtac had 5,29 million customers accessing Facebook on their mobile in December 2012. This equals a 2.5 times higher user growth compared to the beginning of the year. dtac has around 40 per cent of the Facebook mobile users in their network, which is far beyond fair share in the Thai market.

“Figures show there is a correlation between Facebook uptake and revenue growth. dtac is the star example when it comes to leveraging the Facebook partnership, boasting more than 91 per cent mobile internet revenue growth from fourth quarter 2011 to the same quarter in 2012.  This was a significant contributor to revenue growth for dtac last year,” Lee-Johannessen comments.

Offering a number of Facebook products

“We are currently working on several products with Facebook in our markets, offering customers new products such as mobile payment, Facebook SMS integration, Facebook USSD (FB Text), ad clusters and Facebook Java app in local languages. Our best experiences are with day/week packages of Facebook in dtac, the combination of FB Zero and Opera Mini from DiGi, USSD in Uninor and to push the Java app in GrameenPhone in Bangladesh to non-data users,” Lee-Johannessen concludes.

“Telenor Pakistan has always been at the forefront of offering innovative and convenient solutions to its valued customers, and SIM Delivery Service is yet another testament of Telenor Pakistan’s customer centric approach to provide services as per the changing customer preferences. In the current regulatory environment, it is going to be a significant sales channel and we are confident that it will offer convenience to customers’ door steps,” said  Malik Faisal Qayyum, Director Sales & Distribution, Telenor Pakistan, when speaking about the launch of SIM Delivery Service.

All confirmed orders will be delivered to customers within 24 hours, with cash on delivery facility. No additional delivery charges are applicable on these sales and the delivery service is available in 17 metro cities. Customers can also use the same service to port their numbers to Telenor Pakistan’s network and take advantage of its superior packages and services.

About Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan is a provider of high quality telecommunication services in Pakistan since 2005. It has over 30.81 million subscribers, 3,000 employees and a nationwide network covering more than 8,000 cities. It holds a majority share in Tameer Microfinance Bank Limited. Telenor Pakistan is 100% owned by Telenor ASA and adds on to operations in Asia.

Successful partnerships make positive impact

A component of Telenor Group’s corporate responsibility strategy is to “enable” access to information and services, thereby having a positive societal impact. Telenor is currently carrying out joint UNICEF initiatives in Serbia and Bangladesh, using the mobile phone as to tool to enable positive development in people’s lives.

“UNICEF has served as a strong partner for us, and one who recognizes the value of communications technology in reaching out to people. Telenor Group, dtac and UNICEF have now developed another great initiative that will enable families to live healthier in Thailand. This initiative shows dtac’s long-term commitment and focus on the well-being of Thai society, and we anticipate even more great outreach activities to stem from this partnership in Thailand,” said Ola Jo Tandre, Director Corporate Responsibility, Telenor Group.

Mobile phone = birth registration

An additional component to dtac’s role in the “Best start” initiative is the use of the mobile phones as a means of birth registration. Registering a birth means that a child will be in the public system and notified when vaccinations are required or it’s time for school enrollment. Many children in Thailand are still not officially registered, and therefore fall out of the system. This makes them more vulnerable to threats such as human trafficking. dtac and UNICEF see an opportunity for mobile technology to play a role in solving this problem.

“Currently the process to register births is too cumbersome. While more than 90% of births in Thailand are taking place in hospitals, many parents are still not completing the registration process. The mobile phone can serve as a way to engage these parents with information and registration reminders, as well as using the handset itself as a means of registration. This will help ensure basic rights to nationality, public services and education for Thai children,” explained Tandre.

UNICEF also engages the support of a local children’s hospital to help ensure high quality health information through its service. The health-related messages are not promotional but rather purely educational and scientifically accurate.

Dtac is committed to people of Thailand

“With the MOU signed with UNICEF, we are now ready to put this initiative into action. We see that using SMS service as a means to readily convey health and registration information as an effective start to this cooperation,” said Nattawan Sasipibool, Department Head, Social Responsibility, dtac. “Through this project we are deepening our commitment to the people of Thailand by effectively utilizing telecommunication technology to provide support to underserved groups, especially women and children in rural areas.”

Telenor Group had later showed interest in taking part in the second round of auctions for spectrum in Mumbai, provided a change in the auction rules including the reserve price. With the discontinuity of services now and loss of subscriber base, bidding for fresh spectrum in the circle will no longer be possible.

“We have pursued every alternative possible to continue our operations in Mumbai until the new auction takes place. Now the Court has ordered an immediate closure of services and no temporary license too is available to allow a gradual process. Unfortunately, we have no choice now but to follow the Court’s order and close down our network immediately,” said Sigve Brekke, Managing Director of Uninor.

“I deeply regret the consequences this has for our customers, employees and business partners – each of whom have been a part of a remarkable fight back last year. We will now make every effort, within the limitations of this Court order, to minimize the negative impact on all affected by this development”, he added.

Uninor has also simultaneously closed down operations in other circles where the operations had already been scaled down to minimum last year.

In the six circles of Maharashtra and Goa, Gujarat, UP East, UP West, Bihar and Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, Uninor operations will continue as fresh spectrum for 20 years has already been secured. Together, these circles represent a sizeable opportunity for growth. Uninor has also signed roaming agreements to ensure that all its customers get seamless connectivity when travelling to Mumbai.

Read more about our sponsorships and collaboration agreements in Norway:

www.frabreddetiltopp.no/en

“This is an example of Telenor’s overall corporate responsibility strategy to create shared growth in the societies where we operate. Uninor has long focused on female empowerment in their societal outreach, and by sharing the benefits of telecommunications with women in adversity, we are bridging the digital divide as well as providing new employment opportunities in India,” said Mai Oldgard, Head of Corporate Responsibility, Telenor Group.

Project SEWA launched in Maharashtra and Goa

The pilot for project SEWA was launched in Pune in association with the ‘Hope for the Children Foundation’ and seeks to support 50 underprivileged women in the first phase. Under the project the team from the Maharashtra and Goa Circle of Uninor will take the  responsibility:

• to select the women for the project based on their need with the assistance of the NGO
• will train the women in soft skills, spoken English and book keeping
• offer sales training in the product and tariff structures of Uninor services
• provide them with SIM cards and a consignment to sell in credit
• to offer women’s health related information through their VAS

The objective is the all-around development of the capacity and confidence of the participating women, empowering them to raise their families and make a place in society. Awareness on issue was raised through GSMA’s groundbreaking report with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, which stated that women in the developing world are disadvantaged by a prevalent “mobile phone gender gap”. This means that women are 21 percent less likely to own a mobile phone than a man in low and middle income countries like India. Projects such as Uninor SEWA will help address the key barriers to women’s access to mobile phones, including promoting technical literacy and removing cultural barriers to adoption through the advent of women retailers in society. The programme aims to increase access to mobile connectivity and services, thus giving underprivileged women a greater sense of security, independence, economic opportunity and connection with the world outside their homes.

About Hope for the Children Foundation

Hope for the Children Foundation (HFCF) is a trust-based, non-profit organization that was founded in the year 2006 with a mission to serve, help and improve the quality of life of orphaned and underprivileged children of India. HFCF goes a step further to also look after the mothers of these children under a program called ‘Atmanirbharata’ or ‘self reliance’. The endeavor is to equip women from the most disadvantaged backgrounds with the know-how and skills to sustain themselves economically. By embarking on mission SEWA with Uninor, the aim is to help destitute women in the community to steadily move towards entrepreneurship.

Pilot to extend SEWA to 100 women

While the launch of the pilot of SEWA was initially with 50 mobile women retailers but there is an ambition to extend the project to include 100 women.

“It is our endeavor to further extend SEWA to 100 women in the next 6 months and monitor the impact on the target group,” said Madhu Singh Sirohi, Head CR and Internal Communications. “We will study the progress and evaluate the gaps, after which we hope to replicate the initiative in the other circles of Uninor as well.”

In an on-going trial the students can replace their bus tickets, house keys and pocket money with their mobile phone. By using NFC tags, they get location specific information about the arrival time of the next bus, today’s menu at the cantina, tonight’s events at the campus or TripAdvisor. There is also the NFC Fitness Guide that provides them with videos, textual and oral training instructions.

Some tags can provide context sensitive information on an individual level. An example is a tag placed outside a lecture room, that enables only to enrolled students to get information or download materials for the lecture. Besides the retrieval of information, the students are now able to use their Samsung Galaxy S3 phone with NFC technology for file transfers and they are trained in programming their own NFC tags.

NFC City in Schrödingers katt, NRK (Norwegian National Television)

Simplifying customers’ everyday tasks

The trial period started in September 2012 and ends in June 2013. During and after this period, through data mining and surveys, interviews and focus groups – the project will uncover the actual use of the NFC services and the motivations behind, and also try to catch eventual behavioural changes and impact on the users’ everyday life.

“We believe that NFC technologies can simplify our customers’ everyday tasks and offer increased convenience in access to services” says Sigmund Akselsen, project manager.  “Telenor intends to take a leading role in supporting the NFC value system. To do so we need to understand other actors’ interests, and that is why the NFC City project is run together with a number of research partners“, he continues.  It is important to explore Telenor’s strategic position in such a value system and to identify sustainable business models for all actors involved.

“The customers like it – they are not spammed by too many offerings, but instead get suggested exactly what they want,” says Johannes Bjelland.

Together with his colleagues he has been analysing data for many years, still equally excited about how powerful data are, if they are just used.

Explosion of data

The volume of data in general is increasing – within one year we now generate the amount of data that equals the volume created during the whole last decade of the 20th century. And that was just a little more than 10 years ago. Telenor is a large contributor, just like Twitter, YouTube, Google and others. In DTAC only, there are hundreds of millions of voice and sms sessions collected every day. Every session creates additional data about caller, receiver, location, etc. All Telenor Business Units collect and store call data, in addition to product information, network performance data and many other details. By connecting all the data and using the proper tools and data mining techniques, we can get a deep understanding of customers, their habits and needs.

What is big enough data?

“The use of big data is developing. From just measuring what happened to understanding why it happens and ultimately being able to predict what will happen,” Pål Sundsøy says.  He says that how much the potential of the data will be used depends on the corporate culture.

“With so much data giving you a number of accurate facts as relevant input for business decisions, it is no longer defendable to make decisions based on “gut-feeling” alone. Every business decision should be supported by insight from relevant data,” Pål says.

That’s why the team changed the buzz word “big data” to “big enough data”.

“The size in petabytes does not matter, but the  impact the data can have on business decisions,” Pål says.

Not the black box

How are all these data chewed down to meaningful facts? It’s not like a bread machine where you put ingredients in and take a baked bread out and everything else happens on its own, or not a black box, as Pål and Johannes like to say.

The data mining process consists of work on data preparation – deriving the good variables, verifying data quality, and correct data errors, which is some 80 percent of work. All Data Mining is done by specialized software and special ‘machine learning’ algorithms.

Privacy is protected

It is important to point out that all data are anonymised, and that the researchers never see the names or the real phone numbers of the persons when doing the analysis.

“Our work is well aligned with local laws related to privacy and our internal policies that are even more rigorous, because no research can justify jeopardizing customers’ trust. In that sense, the customers and their privacy are well protected,” Johannes explains.

A useful performance benchmark
“The Global 100 gives us a useful benchmark for our performance and for how we compare to the other major players in our industry. The growing interest in corporate sustainability from investors and analysts proves that this part of our business creates value for Telenor Group,” said Ola Jo Tandre, Director and acting Head of Corporate Responsibility, Telenor Group.

Launched in 2005, the Global 100 is an extensive data-driven corporate sustainability assessment and inclusion is limited to a select group of the top 100 large-cap companies in the world. Telenor ranks 48th overall, and first place among the telecoms companies goes to Vivendi of France. Among the four Norwegian companies on the list, Statoil ranks third and Storebrand in sixth.

Measured on sustainability indicators
The Global 100 uses the following sustainability indicators when scoring the companies: energy productivity, carbon productivity, water productivity, waste productivity, Innovation capacity, tax paid (%), CEO to average employee pay ratio, pension fund status,  safety performance, employee turnover, “Clean Capitalism Pay Link”. Further information: www.global100.org .

The full press release can be found here

The company entered the India pay-TV market in 2001 with a local sales office, and  established its Indian subsidiary in 2003 – a market-leading success story for the Norwegian content security provider.

Dedicated to Indian pay-TV operators

“Conax’s success in India is a result of dedication to pay-TV operators in India, a pioneering approach to the needs of the market and its renowned open partnering policy for secure set-top-boxes for pay-TV operators.  Conax has been a pioneer in the India pay-TV market and is here to guide operators in digitization and positioning their market position into the future with digital services and new, exciting solutions, such as multiscreen and hybrid client devices,” said Conax CEO Morten Solbakken.

An early player in the Indian pay-TV market, the company boasts a client device strategy that has led to strong long-term relationships with Indian pay-tv operators including delivery of 24 million security-certified devices through a strategic network of set-top-box partners secured by Conax conditional access solutions

Marking 10 years & 24 million secure devices in India!

Conax is hosting an event for media, customers, partners and friends to celebrate their achievements in India, including a market success recap from Conax management, followed by a celebration and reception for guests. The event will take place on Thursday, January 17th, 4-6 pm at 21st Convergence India, New Delhi.

Harvard Business Review measured the performance data of 3,143 CEOs, with a specific focus on total shareholder performance since their first day on the job. Jon Fredrik Baksaas makes the cut at #99 on the list.

The late Steve Jobs of Apple has served the best performing CEO for the past 17 years, with Jeff Bezos of Amazon taking the second place slot. Only 1.9% of the CEOs studied by Harvard Business Review were women.

Read more about the world’s 100 best performing CEOs at Harvard Business Review.

The group had been studying product spreading for years. They previously concluded that iPhone spreads largely through groups of socially connected people. Same goes for iPad; if exactly one of your friends has iPad, the chance that you will buy one is 14 times higher than if none of your friends is using it.

“Almost every product we looked at shows this strong viral spreading effect. This includes the devices, products like Mobile broadband, even the services that are maybe not as appealing and viral as Iphone—for example, the Mobil Kontroll security product for Norwegian business customers” said Geoffrey Canright.

Apple users live in “a tribe”, Android users don’t care
Are the Android users equally sensitive to their social environment as those with iPhone? The answer is – no. An average iPhone user has 12 friends who are also using iPhone, and only 3,6 who are not. At the same time, an Android user does not have any detectable statistical preference in that sense – having approximately the same number of friends using each.

All other analyses confirm the picture from this one—that iPhone users have much stronger awareness of the brand they choose, than those carrying Android handsets.

“iPhone and Android are capturing two different segments,” Canright explains. “Although the number of Android and Apple users in the Telenor network in Norway is approximately the same, iPhone users are much more loyal to the Apple brand, and apparently more eager to spread the word among their friends.”

Together with his colleagues, he recently presented  a comparison of social effects in adoption of Apple and Android to the WIDS conference  (Workshop on Information and Decision in Social Networks)  at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

“We compared the results obtained through different methods, and could only confirm what we found earlier: Android users have, by many different statistical measures, almost exactly the same behavior as ‘brand-indifferent’ users, while Apple users are clearly very different, in that brand matters very much for them,” Canright says.

The Apple Tribe
Not only this latest study, but also previous research done by Canright and his colleagues confirms that Apple users are quite “contagious”, affecting their friends’ choices. In fact, if one of your friends already has an Apple product, it strongly increases your chances to buy a different Apple product. For example, an iPad user who is connected to another iPad user has a 72 percent chance of having an iPhone.  “We called this phenomenon the Apple tribe,” says Geoffrey Canright. “We see a “tribe” of connected users and Apple devices, living happily together.”

Reflections of this brand loyalty can also be seen when people change their phones. 70 percent of iPhone users buy again an iPhone when they want to renew their favourite gadget, with 42 percent of these upgrading to a new iPhone model.

Your phone says something about you
In addition to analyzing loyalty to respective operative systems, Telenor researchers learn more about the people using the two different operative systems:

A typical iPhone user would then be a very social person, with many friends, between 25 and 50 years old, living in the city, and there is a slightly higher chance that it is a man.

Smartphones users in general are more social and have more friends than those using feature phones. Apple users lead again in the number of friends, ahead of Android. The smartphones are also used more by men than by women, with Android having higher a percentage of male users. Finally, Android is currently stronger than Apple among 20-year-olds, while Apple wins among those who are 25—50 years old.

For payments, banking, etc., I use the phone already to a fairly wide extent. Being able to transfer money when it’s time for lunch on campus makes life so much easier. So I think clearly we will use the cell phone for more things in the future! However, the world is full of conservative young people, so it will probably take a while – and enhanced security – before the boom comes.

- Karolina, Telenor Sweden

Telenor Hungary
Since I have a mobile phone I can manage my life – anytime anywhere – much easier than before, and it is important for me. I usually arrive home only at late night, during the whole day I am connected with my friends and family on my mobile. It wouldn’t be enough to be connected only at night. Anything can happen with the mobile phone… smartphone will even brush your teeth too someday.

- Daniella, Telenor Hungary

Grameenphone
The mobile phone has changed my entire life. For each and every situation I need this device. It can reduce the distance and increase the connectivity with my friends and family members.

Being connected is like my heart beating, because I am used to having a device since 2004, and during my office time I have to depend fully on this, because, without this I cannot  communicate any single person; even my family members. In the future I think we will also use our mobile phones for national voting, online shopping, mobile air ticket booking, etc.

- Shatil Rafi, Grameenphone Customer

But what does it take to go head-to-head with the Internet power players? Well, according to Torgeir Hovden, the CTO for Telenor Digital Services and Comoyo, the answer is simple: A Global Backend that will provide our customers with better Internet services, faster.

“The key is to operate the way the Internet companies operate. We need scale, agility, speed and the ability to leverage local innovation around the entire Telenor Group. The Global Backend is our way of using our global assets to fuel this new Internet-based service arena to compete with the Googles and Apples,” explains Hovden.

A repository of services

Hovden describes the Global Backend as a cloud infrastructure, where all the services and partnerships are integrated, allowing the business units to “plug in” and distribute these services in their markets. This is an attractive model for partners such as Google, who are looking for a single endpoint to reach Telenor’s millions of global customers.

“We are giving business units access to different services – one example is our partnership with Google to create a Telenor storefront in the Google Play store. Telenor can then control the app selection in their local Google Play store, as well as enable customers to pay for applications via their mobile phone bill. Our partners, including Google, are very interested in billing customers via the operator, which makes our billing relationship highly relevant,” says Hovden.

Building a single user-base with Global ID

Hovden also talks about the concept of Global ID, which is a key part of the Global Backend. This is part of the strategy to build a single user-base, in which users have a single ID to log into any service. To demonstrate, Hovden shows how he uses his Global ID to log into both Comoyo’s site in Norway and in Sweden. The Global ID can be used to access a range of new services, even SMS+ (now an internal Telenor pilot) a future service from Comoyo that enables text messaging on web-connected devices, regardless of the presence of a SIM.

Innovating on global scale

“The Global Backend is Telenor’s answer to how we can compete with the Internet players. It’s an infrastructure that makes us relevant and able to offer services to the Group at large. We are building standard solutions, working at a rapid pace and focusing on the needs of our customers in order to innovate on a global scale,” concludes Hovden.

Finding the way in Labyrinth

As a part of preparations for the “Átláccó” Transparent Festival, last week Telenor opened “Átláccó” (Transparent) Labyrinth at Arena Plaza in Budapest. Those visiting the Labyrinth could learn about the threats of corruption in a playful, interactive way and get help on how to make the right decision in corruption situations.

“We created the “Átláccó” Labyrinth to call the attention of shopping mall visitors and nearby schoolchildren to the importance of fighting corruption. Our message is that our personal daily decisions can help make this world a better place to live. We want to take this message to as many people as possible”, said Frank Klausz, Chief Corporate Development Officer of Telenor Hungary, at the opening event.

Visitors of the “Átláccó” Labyrinth could participate in an interactive quiz game. While walking through the transparent maze, they had to make decisions in common daily corruption situations. Visitors making the right choices would find their way out of the labyrinth.

The youngest ones could listen to tales and participate in a drawing contest in the children’s playroom next to the maze. Some of the sessions also featured Telenor staff as storytellers reading fairy tales.

“Because fairness is cool…”

In association with Hungarian student journalist association DUE Media Network, Telenor Hungary also invited 50 young would-be media workers to their premises on a special press conference and discussions about fair business conduct, anti-corruption measures as well as the significance of journalism’s independence.

Guest speaker, a well-known Hungarian journalist, blogger and opinion leader Péter Uj reviewed the characteristics, qualities and values that make a good journalist, talked about the importance of journalists’ independence, loyalty to their own values and convictions. In addition, a representative of Transparency International Hungary held a presentation about the risks of corruption, and the lovable rules.

Announced Ethical Student Journalist award

At the event, Telenor Hungary announced the Ethical Student Journalist special award to be presented at the 20th National Youth Press Festival, May 2013. Young journalists, radio or video-reporters and school papers’ editorial offices are invited to submit articles, radio programmes, audio or video materials. Nominees are expected to give an enjoyable and unique presentation of stories inside and outside Hungary when ethical, investigative journalism helped make great progress. In addition to the case processed, applicants have to focus on presenting the journalists’ activities.

Early this summer, Telenor Hungary entered into partnership with Transparency International Hungary and this December year, it will for the third time support “Átláccó” Festival to celebrate the World Anti-Corruption Day on 7 December. The event’s main goal is to promote the fight against corruption among young people. In addition to awards ceremony for the best anti-corruption app, the festival will host interesting discussions and it will be concluded with a concert of Balkan Fanatik.

The SMARTer 2020 report is the result of cooperation between Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) and twelve dedicated international ICT companies, including Telenor Group. The original SMART 2020 was produced in 2008, and provided analysis of how ICT could address problems in society, including the threat of climate change. In 2012, the projections for ICT’s impact are even greater than the original 2008 estimates.

“SMARTer 2020 is proof of the increasingly important role of ICT in working towards the prevention of global warming due to the emission of dangerous greenhouse gas. Video conferences, smart building management, cloud computing and smart electrical grids are all examples of solutions that contribute to reduced carbon emissions,” said Jon Erik Haug, EVP and Head of Group People Development, Telenor Group.

“For example, the city of Oslo recently started to adopt smart lighting using an advanced web based application and Telenor’s mobile services to control the city’s 80,000 street lights. This smart way of using ICT in the city’s daily operations will result in less wasted electricity and a cost savings of up 50 percent of its annual budget of 60 million NOK,” Haug added.

How can you use ICT solutions to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions?

1. Smartmeeting: Use video conferencing solutions instead of actual travel when possible.
2. Smart working: Telecommute to work once a week, and use unified communication solutions to simplify collaboration across geographical distance in project work.
3. Smart computing: Both small and larger businesses could switch from using localized IT-servers and terminals to using cloud computing for many of their daily needs, such as customer data, email and groupware functions.
4. Smart monitoring: Wireless communications is used to remotely monitor equipment such as utility meters, water pumps, parking meters and office equipment. Remote real-time meter reading or management of in-field equipment help companies improve efficiency, cut costs and deliver more value to the end customer.
5. Smart cities:  Use of innovative digital services that enables real time monitoring and control and that will result in easy-to-use information for both citizens and businesses in their daily living. This will drive efficiencies in the use of energy and improve travel and transport systems in city areas.

Contact

Jan Kristensen, Director Climate Change, Group CR, Telenor Group

Mobile: +47 9083 8897 Email: jan.kristensen@telenor.com

That’s the challenge that Joakim Thorkildsen of Comoyo set out to tackle. With a background as a movie, music and culture reporter for one of Norway’s largest newspapers, Joakim knew that Comoyo needed to earn the trust of the critical consumer in order to credibly sell content. And the best way to do so was to show that they actually love what they sell.

You have to love the content

“I think that in order to be successful with a new movie service like Comoyo, you have to care about more than just money or distribution. You have to actually love the content and have an interest in that content. That was the idea that led us to our movie blog, Comoyo Filter,” said Joakim Thorkildsen, executive editor for Comoyo Filter.

Comoyo Filter was launched on December 1, 2011, with the intention of providing a place for people to share personal opinions, experiences and thoughts on the films they watch.

“We recently published a story about a woman’s top five movies that make her cry. That’s a very personal text, and that’s what we intended. We encourage our writers to share their personalities and opinions with our readers,” said Joakim.

Newspapers now quoting Comoyo Filter

With the demise of in-house newspaper film critics, Comoyo Filter fills a unique space in the Norwegian media landscape…and the content industry is starting to take notice. Filter has become the first-stop for the release of new movie trailers, images and even news. Norwegian dailies VG and Aftenposten recently cited Comoyo Filter as the news source announcing that Norwegian blockbuster Kon-tiki got a Hollywood distribution deal.

“One of our goals was to raise awareness about Comoyo among the content industry, and now we see that these content owners are coming to us to make their films available through Comoyo first, partly because of the awareness our blog has raised,” said Joakim.

Attracting the early adopters

Approximately 30,000 people visit Comoyo Filter regularly. These visitors typically have “above average” interest in film and TV and can be considered “early adopters” when it comes to trying out new services.

Comoyo Filter engages these 30,000 film buffs in discussions about movies that they may not typically see. The idea is to show these viewers that while Comoyo does carry the big blockbusters, it also has a wide selection of content outside the mainstream.

“You don’t need a movie blog to tell you to see the latest Batman movie. You’re probably going to see that anyway. That’s why we try to talk about the movies that you wouldn’t normally hear about, and in turn raise awareness about the breadth of Comoyo’s move selection, as we have quite a good range of independent films,” explained Joakim.

Not afraid to tell the truth

Comoyo Filter has garnered the attention of the Norwegian media, the content industry and even the country’s film buffs. Joakim believes that this success is in part due to their honest and impartial take on movies and TV shows. Filter writers aren’t afraid to say when a movie is terrible, in fact they encourage it.

“We have succeeded in showing people that we offer a personal and honest perspective on movies. This helps people understand that we aren’t just trying to sell them something, but rather create a place for people who love movies,” said Joakim. “Slowly but surely we are building the Comoyo brand by showing people that we truly care about what we are selling.”

About Comoyo

As an independent subsidiary of Telenor, Comoyo is responsible for all product development of internet services for the consumer market in the Telenor Group. Its products will be sold both in the open market and through Telenor’s operators worldwide.

“This collaboration with Opera Software will help us build a stronger connection with our customers in Malaysia, where the majority of people are still using basic feature phones. The DiGiLive Web Pass will give them a taste of the convenience and ease of a mobile Internet lifestyle,” said Praveen Rajan, Head of Products for Internet for DiGi.

Part of Telenor’s Mobile Internet Asia project

Due to the success of DiGiLive Web Pass with Opera, this type of collaboration has become a part of the Mobile Internet Asia (MIA) project that is currently underway in Telenor Digital Services. The goal of MIA is to spread the use of the Internet in Telenor’s Asian markets, and DiGi’s Web Pass is one example of how that can be done.

“The Web Pass project in DiGi helps us better understand how we can leverage our digital touch points to increase sales of our core products: data and voice packages. Utilizing Opera Mini as a sales channel for data packages is especially interesting since it is in a relevant context – customers can buy data packages while they are already online,” says Anders Morthen, VP Internet Products & Innovation, Telenor Digital Services.

Web Pass targets casual Facebook users

DiGiLive Web Pass primarily targets casual Facebook users who do not subscribe to data plans, but seek flexible options for accessing their accounts from mobile devices. Customers can choose from four different packages — 1-Day Internet, 1-Hour Internet, 1-Day Facebook and 1-Hour Facebook.

“Our primary strategy has been to ensure customers have a positive and good mobile internet experience regardless of which mobile platform or mobile phone they are using. Customers now have more affordable options to choose from with the introduction of our DiGiLive Web Pass,” said Praveen Rajan.

“To start using cognitive radio equipment, a few things need to be in place: there has to be a serious interest among vendors to produce and sell the equipment, there has to be standard for usage of the equipment, and regulations. Currently, none of these three is in place, but the QoSMOS project has made significant progress towards this” says Dr Michael Fitch.

Dr Michael Fitch.

Fitch is Wireless research team leader in British Telecom Innovate and Design, and Project Manager for QoSMOS, an EU project that focuses on opportunistic use of cognitive radio technology and service neutral spectrum. We met him on the occasion of the QoSMOS meeting at Telenor headquarters at Fornebu, Norway, where Telenor, as a partner and contributor in the project, hosted one of the last meetings of the project team.

Regulations and vendors

“We have done a lot of progress on harmonizing regulation and standards across Europe and to open up Europe as a big market, thus making it more interesting for vendors,” Fitch says, “but majority has invested in LTE and LTE advanced development, and is not likely that they will get into the next big investment yet,” he says, explaining that the smaller vendors and start-ups are more likely to begin producing cognitive radio equipment.

EU has the ambition to harmonize regulations, which is also confirmed by the document on spectrum sharing recently published by EU Commission. UK  is about to introduce new regulations in this area, making opportunistic use of spectrum available, while Finland is about to start a trial.

“The cognitive radio is certainly going to be part of the future method of allocation and deployment of spectrum, but it will take time. Not all operators are ready for spectrum sharing,” Fitch says, explaining that cognitive radio brings both opportunities and threats for traditional mobile operators.

You may say I’m a dreamer…

The way he sees it, the coverage is not a differentiator any longer. Having that in mind one could just pull out spectrum and manage it smartly, as a shared resource.

Although in some markets there are examples of spectrum sharing (Telenor and Telia in Sweden), it is still a disruptive model. It has the potential to change the business landscape in the industry and introduce new distribution of roles. Someone could do only spectrum management, while others could focus on competitive services.

For Per Hjalmar Lehne, Telenor’s researcher and participant in the QoSMOS project, this change is inevitable:
“If operators don’t grab this opportunity, although it changes their business model today, someone else will do it,” he says boldly.

M2M as a low hanging fruit?

From their vision for future, to present, Fitch and Lehne agree that there is high potential for use of cognitive radio in the areas that are outside of mobile operators’ main stream, such as M2M. This could be one of the first areas to deploy “thinking equipment” as soon as regulations make it possible.

Beyond 12.12.2012.

The project that currently analyses both technical and business aspects of the cognitive radio is about to end its work after three years this December. On 12 December,  the results will be presented in London.

“What happens after that is partly up to each partner – to find their ways further and deploy the knowledge gained during the project,” Fitch says.

The project also has the External advisory Board – consisting of regulators, vendors, broadcasters, who should help place QoSMOS results in the relevant national as well international bodies (such as CEPT, ITU and SDR Forum) and thus will help QoSMOS yield the greatest influence over future regulation and standardization.

“We have some ideas for new projects related to spectrum management,” say Fitch and Lehne enigmatically. But before they come back to that, we’ll have the opportunity to catch up with them in London, when they will reveal all findings of the project.

It’s been less than a month since he was named Head of Digital Services in Telenor, replacing Kristin Skogen Lund who had led the DS unit since its inception in September 2011. Spilling’s first day on the job ended in the approval of funding for the future growth of Comoyo. “It was a good day,” he says. Since that day, Spilling has spent much of his time abroad, in meetings with the global companies with whom Telenor cooperates to realize its digital service offerings.

Finding a balance

“After three weeks on the job, my 9-year-old son Sebastian said to me, ‘Dad, it’s been a very, very bad start,’ due to my incessant travel,” says Spilling. “It’s always a challenge to find a balance between work and home, but this is an exciting time for Digital Services. Telenor’s operations today have already brought voice, SMS and Internet to nearly 150 million customers worldwide…but we can do so much more!”

Spilling explains that Digital Services is all about delivering the smart services that consumers love. With a team of engineers, developers and numerous experts behind him, Spilling’s DS unit has already seen progress, and for the first time in a long time, Telenor is taking a position in developing its own services.

Global backend is top priority

“Right now my first priority is the development and enablement of the global backend, which is our global infrastructure for connecting all of the business units to the great digital services we offer group-wide. This is in many ways the foundation for all that we do,” says Spilling.

From math to telecom

With obvious passion for the technology behind digital services and its promise to change the lives of the consumers, one would imagine that Spilling stems from a strictly IT background. But his Master’s degree in mathematics left him without many job options back in 1992, and it was by accident that he entered the world of telecommunications at all.

“I had a job interview with Alcatel Lucent shortly after I graduated, for an analyst position, studying the traffic in data and telecommunication networks. I was asked if I had heard of ‘erlang’, to which I responded ‘no’, thus confirming my true lack of telecommunications knowledge at the time,” says Spilling.

But Spilling got the job anyway, and took on a position using his math skills in the analysis of networks. From there he began the journey that would eventually lead to Telenor and his ever-growing passion for technology. In 2000, he was recruited for a position in Nextra, a now abandoned Telenor international ISP initiative, followed by several other positions mainly on the product and technology side of the business.

“I would say that I’ve always had an interest in technology, but now I’m sort of a hard core telco/Internet guy, surrounded each day by extremely competent people. What I’ve learned in my 12 years here is that this is truly an organization with competent people…people who are willing to take risks,” says Spilling.

A calculated risk-taker

When asked if he is a risk-taker himself, Spilling refers to his varied background and points out that he hasn’t exactly chosen the most stabile career path. But at the same time he likes logic and he’s a realist, he explains, so his type of risk-taking tends to be a bit more calculated.

“I think it’s important to say that what drives me is passion. I’m passionate about what I do, and that’s why I love this job. We all have to be a little bit crazy in order to meet our goals,” he says.

The time is now

The stakes are high in Telenor Digital Services, and four years from now Spilling envisions that Digital Services will have achieved its goal of 10 billion NOK in revenue, and there will be global services running across the entire group. And hopefully Telenor will have successfully outcompeted Netflix, he adds.

“We have a vision and we have to dare to be bold. Telenor from little old Norway has succeeded in doing this before and today we have millions of customers around the world. Now we have to do it again on the service layer. So it’s time for a little bit of craziness and a little bit of risk-taking. Let’s make it happen!”

“We have secured our operations in areas where Uninor has really established itself as a strong challenger. We have taken market positions here that give us a solid platform for further growth. With the uncertainties connected to spectrum and licenses out of the way, we are now moving forward”, says Jon Fredrik Baksaas President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

”India remains a country of tremendous potential. By securing these core circles, we are well positioned to continue to win every day in the world’s most fiercely competitive mobile market,” he adds.

Engines of growth at the heart of Telenor’s Indian footprint

Telenor will now be operating in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarkhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat. Telenor’s footprint does not include large metros such as Mumbai or Delhi, but covers a number of smaller and mid-sized cities, as well as vast semi-urban and rural areas. Most of these states are densely populated, for example Uttar Pradesh is 2/3 the size of Norway, but has a larger population than Brazil (at 200 million).

There are 95 middleweight Indian cities in the states where Telenor is operational. Over the past decade, these mid-sized cities have grown by 37% on average, while five of them have seen triple-digit growth in the same period. In Telenor’s footprint circles, there are 26 cities with more than one million inhabitants and 50 cities with more than 500,000 people.

Telenor aims to boost connectivity

Accelerating the overall growth of these middleweight cities requires a friendly regulatory environment and stability in order to incentivize entrepreneurs and attract investors.

“Healthy competition in the telecom sector can help realize the promise of these vast and populous regions. With fresh spectrum secured, Telenor is now ramping up networks and distribution, in order to boost connectivity and contribute to the development of India,” says Jon Fredrik Baksaas.

Helps parents keep kids safe

Mobile phone makes it possible to stay in touch with your kids at any time. Appreciated by parents, it is a clear number one reason when parents decide to get a mobile phone to their children. Just being able to call their little ones when they are late, is what as many as 88 % see as the major advantage when the youngest family members carry their own mobile.

No wonder then, that almost half of the interviewed sees as the biggest challenge the situation when the phone stays forgotten at home, or when children don’t answer their calls. Parents like to be able to reach their kids at any time and appreciate the feeling of control that mobile phone gives them.

Mum’s old phone is not good enough

The kids who are now about to get their first phone were born in 2004, when we (born in 20the century) were amazed with the slim shaped,  clam shell phones with two screens, thinking that it must be the top of mobile phone evolution. The very same year Apple launched 1^st generation of iPod Mini. Growing up with advanced devices, those who are about to get their first mobile today want more than an old keyboard phone, and they know how to use it.

For six of 10 kids, the first mobile phone is also a brand new one and just as often – a smartphone. That should not come as a big surprise in the Danish market, where the smartphone penetration is 50 %. That’s probably why parents see as an advantage that mobile phone helps their children to take part in today’s digital world (42% of interviewed).

«Smartphone is a good tool for kids that in addition to calls and messaging can be used to play and learn. Children are learning quickly and are able to use the possibilities of smartphones,” says Mattias Ringqvist, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Consumer in Telenor Denmark.

Three of four kids use their phone for gaming, while every fourth surfs the Internet. Still, the phone is first and foremost used to call parents – says 95 % of interviewed.

Enabling safe use

When choosing the subscription for their kids, parents’ decision is driven by the need for cost control and safety; fathers being a bit more concerned with the first one, while mothers put safety on top.

Today it is possible to choose tariff plans adjusted to children, with filters blocking access to inappropriate content and limited usage.

Telenor’s Mattias Ringqvist recommends parents to choose these tariff plans and avoid unpleasant surprises. Another good advice is to define clear rules on when and how the phones should be used, so both children and parents can with less worries, enjoy the benefits of being connected.

Top ranked in the Nordics

Telenor also ranks among the top scorers within the telecommunications sector in the Nordic region. This is the first year that Telenor has scored better than industry peers, including TeliaSonera in Sweden/Finland and TDC in Denmark.

“Telenor Group has a robust and transparent non-financial reporting system where energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and trends in energy usage can be measured for both the Group and for individual business units,” said Jan Kristensen, Director Climate Change, Telenor Group. “Being ranked by CDP as one of the global telecom companies with highest carbon disclosure scores shows that we are progressing in terms of our climate ambitions.”

Networks comprise 80% of total energy consumption

Energy use in the Business Units operations is the main contributor to Telenor’s overall CO2 emissions, with network energy use comprising more than 80 percent of the total energy consumption.  The climate target on Business Unit level is therefore defined as BU’s energy consumption divided by its revenues.

Business units focus on reducing carbon emissions

“Our overall reduction in carbon emission is largely due to the Business Units’ focus on carbon reducing initiatives such as network swaps, sourcing of energy efficient technologies, infrastructure-sharing, more energy efficient data centres and energy efficiency measures related to the office buildings,” said Kristensen.

A review of the BU’s energy efficiency ambitions from 2012-15, indicates that the announced Group’s climate carbon ambitions towards 2017 (excluding India) will be reached one or two years ahead of schedule. 

Technology key to low carbon world

“Telenor views climate change as a threat to the world – a threat that the mobile industry should address. Technology is one of the keys to the transition to a low carbon world, which is why Telenor works strategically with various initiatives, both Group-wide and in the Business Units, to take its share of the societal responsibility,” concluded Kristensen.

About the Carbon Disclosure Project

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an independent not-for-profit organization and works to transform the way the world does business to prevent dangerous climate change and protect our natural resources.  CDP works with more than 3,000 of the largest corporations in the world to help them ensure that an effective carbon emissions / reductions strategy is made integral to their business. CDP is backed up by 655 institutional investors worldwide with $78 trillion under management.

Reports for reading

The CDP Global 500 Report for 2012

The CDP Nordic Report for 2012

Sepidah worked with Telenor’s Research in Trondheim.

Sepideh is one of three NTNU students who worked this summer with Telenor’s Research in Trondheim, preparing the test environment for the Next on Cloud Computing project. The project explores business opportunities for Telenor generated by the cloud computing.

Innovating with students
“By engaging these students we managed to have the testing infrastructure in place in a shorter period of time. On the other hand, as potential employees they got a chance to see how we work in Telenor and what kind of interesting technological challenges we meet here.  This is also a good way of working together with Universities in an open innovation model, where we can contribute to education and the direction of research on the University,” says Humberto Castejon, researcher in Research and Future Studies (RFS), adding that choosing three interns among 12 excellent students and applicants, was not an easy job.

The Telenor research hub in Tromsø, welcomed five interns as part of the co-operation with University of Tromsø and Norwegian Research Council. The students designed and implemented NFC related services, such as payment via mobile (in the form of a prepaid coffee card), using the phone as the apartment key, a training related service at the students’ gym and several NFC enabled information services  on the student campus. Their work was part of the NFC City project, driven by the team of Telenor’s researchers Arne Munch-Ellingsen, Bente Evjemo and Sigmund Akselsen in Tromsø.

Real problems and real deliveries
While five interns up north explored NFC services, three guys in their twenties worked hard at Telenor’s offices at Fornebu – analyzing how the use of IPv6 can improve signaling in mobile networks. The need for improved signaling is a consequence of increased number of smartphones in the networks and thus increased signaling traffic in the networks.

Ole Kristian Håkonsen Fosse, Sami Sarinc and Ole-Petter Olsen.

It was the third year in a row that Telenor Norway offered summer internships. Ole Kristian Håkonsen Fosse and Ole-Petter Olsen, both studying the 4th year at NTNU, Communication technology and Computer Engineering respectively, and Sami Sarinc, 5th year of Informatics at the University of Oslo, explored how signaling traffic can be decreased by changing communication pattern among applications.

“They have worked hard and came up with some interesting results that we are going to use and take further”, says  Magne Eimot, from Telenor Norway’s Technology, responsible for the IPv6 project.

“This was not the first time we had interns in the IPv6 project and based on our experience it is a good way to work with certain issues intensively over a shorter period of time. The interns did some good work for Telenor, while getting valuable working experience”, he added.

“Satisfied students and satisfied project managers! Our aim is to have an attractive and structured offer for students, that would help us recruit the people with expertise that we will need in the years to come,” says Amira Delnezirovic, from Telenor Norway’s HR, who runs the Internship project.
“We offer two to four projects a year, enabling students to experience the real professional challenges and deliverables. On the other hand, Telenor establishes relationship with young and talented people who can certainly contribute to our business today and in future.”

Summer days are over
The contact with interns does not stop after the summer. In fact, a few of those who were interviewed for intern positions in Trondheim, have also chosen Telenor’s researchers as supervisors in their projects at the University.

Sepideh Kanani is one of them. She is now working on the project “Cloud Brokering for QoS” with supervision of Humberto Castejon and Astrid Undheim from RFS. Only a year ago, she heard about Cloud Computing for the first time.

“Having heard that it is the wave of future, I was curious to learn more about it. I did some reading and attended a few virtual conferences, but honestly I got my main knowledge in this area by working in Telenor,” she said.

Read more about Trainee and Internship arrangements in the Telenor Group

But the journey to get to this point in her life was not a simple one. Madhu says that she was not raised to be an empowered woman, but slowly and steadily she became the type of person with the freedom to build a career for herself and to pursue her interests in performing. In 2010, Madhu joined Uninor as Head of Corporate Responsibility (CR), charged with the task of developing Uninor’s CR program under Telenor Group’s instruction of “creating shared value”. With that direction in hand, Madhu turned her attention to an issue in India that she is most passionate about: empowering women like herself to prosper.

Closing the gender gap

From the beginning of her career in Uninor, Madhu was committed to the empowerment of women through telecommunications technology, using her own story to inspire and engage others. She was attracted to Uninor because of its business-aligned CR strategy, rather than traditional corporate philanthropy to which most Indian companies adhere.

Madhu and Uninor were the first in the Indian telecom industry to raise the issue of the gender gap in mobile phone ownership. Fewer women in India own phones than men. Madhu is quick to point out that phone ownership leads to both social and economic growth, and women should be a part of this growth. Uninor started a project to empower women through education and entrepreneurial support, helping them to become telecom retailers. Early on, the project gained the attention of the GSM Association and the Cherie Blair Foundation, and it became one of three global projects to be included in the GSM Association’s mWomen initiative to reduce the gender gap worldwide.

“As an Indian I have faced many challenges in becoming a career woman. I am from a traditional and conservative family who did not initially understand my desire to work. At the same time, I also understand that when a person becomes economically empowered, it raises their status in both their families and society, so I was personally quite motivated to see more women become empowered,” explained Madhu.

Education and entrepreneurship

Uninor’s projects are generally focused on educating women about mobile technology and giving them the tools to run their own telecom retail business. Most recently Uninor has started a project for women to run shops that offer telecommunications services as well as solar-powered lanterns. In many parts of India, electricity is only available for 12 hours a day, meaning that the lights go out each evening. The female participants in this project can now rent out their solar lanterns for a profit, and provide light to families in the village. Uninor has also worked with India’s government to create a health information portal that women can access via the mobile phone.

“Women were so surprised by the magic of the phone… the fact that one little device could give them everything from home remedies to vital information on cervical cancer,” said Madhu.

Changing attitudes in the family

Acceptance is the word that Madhu now uses to describe how her family feels about her career. She explains that the international recognition she has received and the fact that she is doing such meaningful work for women has gone a long way to build support among her parents and in-laws.

“I think that because I’m working with women, to help women, my family can empathize and take pride in what I am doing. They are changing their opinions and supporting me by helping out with the children when needed, because they know that what I do is important,” she said.

We’ve got a good thing going here

“It’s been quite a journey for both me and for Uninor, and I think we’ve managed quite well to identify some critical issues that overlap women and telecom. I think we’ve got a good thing going here,” concluded Madhu.

A wife. A mother. A Uninor employee. An advocate for women. And a stand-up comedian. Madhu has done what many women in India think of as the impossible. But with Uninor at her back, Madhu plans to continue making the impossible possible for the women of India.

Employees and customers contribute to success

“Our success is attributable first and foremost to the dedicated employees of Telenor Pakistan who exhibit ‘ karo mumkin’ philosophy in their daily work.   An equally important role is played by our distribution network and business partners.  We mustn’t forget the regulatory framework in Pakistan that promotes fair and competitive environment, which has helped our country leapfrog others in mobile phone penetration and allowing tens of millions of people in Pakistan to take advantage of the benefits of mobile communications.  And last but not least, we thank the 30 million customers who show their support by choosing Telenor for their communications needs,” said Aamir Ibrahim, Chief Marketing Officer, Telenor Pakistan.

Telenor Pakistan is Pakistan’s largest European investor, having brought in an investment of more than USD two billion. Telenor has previously won the Best Place to Work Award from Pakistan Society of HR Management & Engage Human Resources, and Telenor Pakistan’s branchless banking solution “easypaisa” has been lauded both locally and internationally for its success in banking the unbanked. Recently Telenor Pakistan was awarded the Telenor Group performance award for being the business unit that has best strengthened its market position.

About Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan is a provider of high quality telecommunication services in Pakistan since 2005. It has over 30 million subscribers, 3,000 employees and a nationwide network covering more than 8,000 cities. It holds a majority share in Tameer Micro Finance Bank Limited. Telenor Pakistan is 100% owned by Telenor ASA and adds on to operations in Asia.

The ‘hype’ about HTML 5 is related to the vision that this new language gives web developers the ability to write feature-rich applications that can run on any device. Telecom companies such as Telenor embrace this due to cost reductions and as a means to break out of the platform vendor value chain lock-in (Apple/Android/Windows). However, several challenges must be overcome in order for this vision to become a reality.

Q: Frode, can you start by telling us what HTML actually is?

Frode: HTML is the technical language describing how a web site looks, including interactive elements.  This language is not only used to view web pages in a web browser but also to develop applications. HTML is standardized in the W3C (see fact box), where Telenor became a member in 2012.

Q: What’s new with HTML5?

Frode: First of all it’s important to differentiate between the HTML5 standard and the public vision of HTML5. The HTML5 standard that will be finalized in 2014 is just a minor evolution from the previous HTML4. But the public vision of HTML5 is an advanced application platform which is all about the battle for value chain control with great opportunities for many actors, including Telenor.

Q: What are the new exciting features in HTML5?

Frode: For the HTML5 standard specifications the most interesting new feature is enabling web applications to continue working when disconnected from the web. Also, the HTML5 standard has a built-in support for audio and video. The third main change is often called the “Flash killer”. Flash has been the main method to provide ads on the web, but is a proprietary solution requiring manual install by users, is not available on all platform and has security problems. The extended graphic support in HTML5 makes Flash redundant.

Q: And what does the VISION of HTML5 imply in terms of new features?

Frode: The popular vision of HTML5 as an application platform is much more impressive. First of all it promises content and service providers simplified development and maintenance. Developers can write one application in HTML5 that works on any device.

A second promise is that the applications can be distributed “everywhere”. Today most content providers need to sell their applications through App Stores owned by Apple and Google. With HTML5, providers can sell their own web applications through an application store or a web site they control themselves.

The promise to users is simplified and hassle-free installation. For example, iPhone users visiting the Financial Times website are asked if they want to install their web application and if they agree, the installation happens automatically.

Q: Why do Telcos and Telenor embrace this vision of HTML5?

Frode: The HTML5 promises are attractive for many actors in the industry. To begin with, the simplified development and maintenance help reduce cost. Facebook reports that their users access their site from 7000 different types of mobile devices, and developing all these native applications is simply not feasible.

The “distribution everywhere” promise is all about the control of the mobile value-chain. It’s problematic that one actor controls the whole value chain. The best example is Apple which censors applications allowed in their AppStore and also forces all iPhones to use this store exclusively. This means service and content providers lose contact with these customers.

HTML5 unlocks the closed platform distribution channels making it possible to compete with platform-specific native applications. This freedom is attractive for telecom companies and is why many of them supports the new HTML5 based FirefoxOS creating a fully open mobile ecosystem out of control of actors such as Google and Apple. With increased control, mobile operators will have the ability to offer richer experiences for a lower price, helping to drive adoption across developing markets.

Q: Are there any other opportunities for Telenor in using HTML5?

Frode: Yes, several. For instance, there are opportunities for Telenor in HTML5 related to payment solutions and services. There is also ongoing standardization work enabling commercial video service providers like Comoyo to move away from proprietary plug-ins and safely stream commercial video using pure HTML5.  In general, we need to follow the directions of Over-the-top (OTT) services.

Q: The vision of the HTML5 sounds great. What are the challenges reaching it?

Frode: We still have a long way to go before the HTML5 vision is fulfilled. One of the main challenges is that not all the required functionality to replace all native applications with web applications is in place. Regarding the “distribution anywhere” promise, the main challenge is that platform vendors including Apple and Google can block any feature they feel will undermine their control or core business. This creates a real risk that HTML5 applications will not ‘run everywhere’ for a long time and is the reason we and other operators support the FirefoxOS.

Q: Taking all these elements into consideration, what do you make of the vision of HTML5?

Frode: Although HTML5 web apps are still premature, the benefits of the future features are extensive. And the good news is that Telenor has the opportunity to influence the future open service landscape and value chains by participating and contributing in the open arenas, like W3C, where this future is created.

About Frode Kileng

Frode has worked as a research scientist in the area of Internet technology and services most of his 19 years long professional life, the past 14 years in Telenor. VoIP and real-time communication has been a common theme throughout his career, ranging from Keyhole surgery to Unified Communication. He has participated in the Internet Engineering Task Force since 2004 and represents Telenor in the W3C Advisory Committee.

Frode is working in the Next Generation Services unit in the Telenor Research and Future Studies and works and lives in Tromsø, Norway.

About W3C

HTML is standardized in the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the group responsible for the standardization of web technologies. Telenor became a member in 2012 and participates along with a range of other actors to make web technology more advanced. W3C has currently 386 members, including operators, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Opera and Department of Information Technologya and the Government of India.

Visit the website of W3C

Related information

Mozilla Gains Global Support For a Firefox Mobile OS (Mozilla website)

As the utility industry’s key partners, mobile network operators such as Telenor are looking to better understand security and privacy requirements for smart grids (including smart meter infrastructure and smart homes), and are working with the utility industry to find ways that mobile networks can address these requirements.

“Smart meters are a prerequisite for achieving EU’s 2020 climate and energy goals, and for customers, these meters are the most visible component of a Smart Grid infrastructure. The aim of our research with SINTEF is to contribute to a better understanding of threats to smart meters,” said Jan Kristensen, Director Climate Change, Telenor Group.

 Privacy requirements

When smart meters are deployed, the utility companies will automatically collect information more frequently. For billing purposes, hourly readings are necessary, but for grid management purposes the local utility company can make use of per-minute or even per-second readings. This results in huge amounts of data for each household. This data must be kept confidential, as it can reveal information on the lifestyle and habits of the specific household.

“There is no doubt that usage data must be protected, and there must be clear rules and guidelines in place describing what this data should be used for and who should have access. This is already the case for other similar large-scale collections of personal information, such as money transactions, phone calls and broadband usage,” said Kristensen.

“The smart meter services provided must protect privacy and trusted by default; the principle of privacy-by-design should be followed at all times during development and in operation; so that the customers do not have to be concerned about their own privacy,” he added.

 Demo Steinkjer

The research into smart grid security threats has been performed by SINTEF, with funding from Telenor. It is part of the overall project called Demo Steinkjer, which is organised by the local utility NTE and supported by the Norwegian Smart Grid Centre.

Demo Steinkjer invites partners to test innovative products and services associated with smart meters and smart grids.  Steinkjer is a community of 20,000 people in the middle of Norway. This pilot project enables partners to test smart customer solutions, local and national energy markets, and intelligent storage solutions including electric vehicles among this small community.

”Through mobile technology, today’s operating expenses when it comes to lighting the streets can be reduced by 30 to 50 percent and energy expenses by 40 to 60 percent. In total, we are talking about enormous sums,” said Tom Kristoffersen, a department head for the City of Oslo.

Big savings

”Norwegian municipalities can save significant amounts by introducing this type of technology. This can also enable great up-selling possibilities in an exciting market,” said Rune Rindalsholt, who works in customer relations with public administration for Telenor.

”Through this new way of working, we are also strengthening our relationship with the customer,” he added.

Norway’s capital city uses more than 60 million kroner on street lighting each year and the city is on target with the first stage of its upgrade to new street lighting by the end of November.

SIM card

The many control points that run the city’s 80,000 streetlights will get new and high-tech insides. With a modem and SIM card, the streetlights can now be run from a webpage.

”The SIM card enables communication between the control unit and the management portal. When there is an error in a light or a circuit, a message will be sent over the mobile network,” said Tore Larsen, who works with Telenor in delivering M2M technology.

A few other municipalities are also starting to set up more intelligent street lighting, but on a larger scale. The fact that Oslo is on board is important.

”The city of Oslo is the driver that helps make other municipalities aware of the great economic and environmental savings that can result by moving over to a new and better technology,” said Larsen.

A drain on the budget

The lighting of streets, parks and lighted trails accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the total expenses in the running and maintenance of streets and roads, according to Vegforum for cities and towns.

”Outdated technology means in practice that the bulbs are lit for an unnecessary period of time. Today the lights are turned on and off according to daylight, through the help of photocells. The margin for error is 40-45 minutes for each of the 80,000 fixtures each day,” said Tom Kristoffersen in Oslo Municipality.

After the transition to the new control system, the lights will be turned on and off via the web, in connection with the time of sunrise and sunset.

”We are now swapping the core of the control system. To achieve full effect, we are swapping the fixtures in each streetlight as well. We are already done this in several test areas. In Oppsal, we managed to reduce energy use by a total of 62 percent,” said Kristoffersen.

The upcoming budget allocations will determine the rate of the swap of fixtures.

Better control

With the new fixtures in place, much can be saved when it comes to maintenance as well.

”Today, a burnt out streetlight is reported in via tips from the public or through discovery upon inspection. Through the new technology, we will get an immediate message when a lamp has burned out, alerting us as to which one it is,” said Kristoffersen.

Through additional development, the system will be capable of providing an alert as to why the streetlight has burnt out, whether it was an electrical error or due to age. The operator can also see how many hours the bulb has been out and can then better plan the shift of the bulb.

“Telenor has the expertise and knowledge to develop revolutionary mHealth solutions. We wanted to know how our technology can help best. Therefore we examined 12 Telenor countries to see how we can help with our technologies. We examined, for instance how can we increase efficiency in modern healthcare through remote monitoring solutions that enable the elderly people to live longer in their own homes. In our vision, smartphone is a magic wand in our hands that will offer ideal solutions to greatly burdened healthcare systems. Eventually, all you need is a mobile phone to make true wonders”, said Christopher Laska, CEO of Telenor Hungary, at the event.

mHealth: A win-win situation

This year’s study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), in cooperation with Telenor, explores the potential impact of mHealth solutions, such as how Norway can save € 1.5 billion each year with remote monitoring solutions for the elderly and how Hungary could save 40,000 nights in the hospital by treating certain patients remotely.

At the Futurology Symposium the media and the public received information on how Telenor’s mHealth blood pressure and glucose mHealth appliances worked in five hospitals of Szabolcs-Szatmár county, enabling doctors to provide quality care to patients, by increasing effectiveness and avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions.

“mHealth can be one of the keys to redefining and reinvigorating our struggling healthcare systems, as well as enhancing the healthy lifestyles and longevity of our citizens”, said Frank Klausz III. “The telecommunications industry is well-positioned to play a central role in the evolution of mobile healthcare. Together with doctors, patients, healthcare providers and with a strong commitment from the regulatory side we can achieve a rare moment in healthcare: a true win-win situation”, he added.

Telenor mHealth solutions in Hungary and abroad

• Medistance in Hungarian hospitals: 480 Medistance blood pressure and blood sugar level measuring devices help in the more efficient treatment of 120 patients in 5 hospitals in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county. Watch a video about the project on YouTube (in Hungarian)
• HealthTrack, the healthcare app: A revolutionary application called HealthTrack system has been developed at Medical Informatics R&D Center, University of Pannonia (UP). The system is based on smart phone applications for dietary and lifestyle counselling, while the health related personal data collected from various sensors are stored in the Telenor Objects Shepherd data store developed by Telenor Group.
• Telenor Objects and Telenor Connexion: At Telenor, we are very active in introducing a variety of mHealth products worldwide. The Telenor Objects from Norway and Telenor Connexion from Sweden offered a selection of mHealth appliances at the event that enable remote diagnostics and treatment, e.g. fall detection, blood pressure-and glucose measurements, movement detection, GPS-tracking, temperature measurements.

Learn more about the mHealth study and get an overview of mHealth activities in the Telenor Group

“Grameenphone has been continuously working with the government of Bangladesh to develop the education sector in particular. This agreement again confirms our commitment to facilitate this very important sector. We guarantee to provide our full support to ensure the necessary quality and service to this project.,” said Tore Johnsen, Chief Executive Officer in Grameenphone.

Set for Digital Bangladesh

This initiative comes in line with the vision of establishing a “Digital Bangladesh” by 2021. The country today has low Internet penetration of approximately 3,5 percent and tremendous potential both to increase usage of Internet and its benefits for the society.
In addition to “ICT Project for Education in Secondary and Higher Secondary Level”, several sub-projects are also being run to improve the quality of education, train the teachers in an effective way, and improve the examination system in education sector across the country as part of this umbrella project.

Nurul Islam Nahid, honorable Minister for Education of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, and the chief guest at the signing ceremony said, “Grameenphone is a proven top service provider in terms of network coverage and service quality. Being a Grameenphone user myself, I have the confidence that they would assure us the network quality and service level required for this crucial project. This agreement marks an important milestone in establishing the Digital Bangladesh, one of the government’s key manifestos.”

GP wins the bid

As Grameenphone earned this agreement after the bidding process, Allan Bonke, Chief Marketing Officer-Grameenphone said, “This is the biggest bid for Internet service in public and private sector of Bangladesh till date, and we have been able to win this amid strong competition because we commit to quality and in ensuring positive customer experience. This is an important deal to us and I assure our optimum support along the way.”

In February 2012, Telenor Montenegro signed a memorandum of understanding with the Montenegrin Ministry for Information Society and Telecommunications to initiate a joint project, called “Connecting Generations”, to improve online child safety in the country.

1,000 students participate in Internet safety education

As a part of its cooperation with the Ministry, Telenor Montenegro trained 20 ambassadors of safe Internet. In addition, they hosted 40 peer education workshops that reached more than 1,000 students in the sixth and seventh grades in five different elementary schools.

During Telenor Montenegro’s Safe Internet Forum, CEO Kaaren Hilsen recapped the success of the Connecting Generations project during her opening address.

“Since its start in February 2012, I’ve had the pleasure to follow the progress and development of this project. It was particularly interesting to see so much energy and knowledge shown by the Safe Internet Young Ambassadors,” said Kaaren.

“We all have an important role in strengthening child safety on the Internet, and we have a lot of work ahead of us,” she added.

Almost every child in primary school uses Internet

The Ministry conducted research in local primary schools, and presented their findings during Telenor Montenegro’s Safe Internet Forum.

• 95.7 percent of students surveyed use the Internet
• 71.5 percent of parents surveyed use the Internet
• 91.7 percent of parents surveyed believe that their child has not experienced any inappropriate situations on the Internet
• 60.8 percent of parents talk to their kids about how to use the Internet.
• 19.7 percent of parents explain to their children how to use Internet safely

Project continues into new school year

Telenor online safety project will continue to reach out to local schools, starting up again in mid-September. This year’s slogan is “Win Internet, surf wisely”, and will expand to 20 more schools in 10 cities. In addition, they will work more with parents and have a stronger focus on a more targeted media campaign. Telenor employees will have an active role in the workshops that are conducted throughout the year.

Spreading the Web, responsibly

“It was great to see Telenor Montenegro really take the lead in raising the issue of online child safety in Montenegro. They have had a very successful cooperation with local government, through their project to educate primary school students on responsible Internet use. Telenor Montenegro is actually the first of Telenor’s business units in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) to have launched the Child Abuse Filter.” said Elisabeth Biering, Director Corporate Responsibility in Telenor Group.

“These activities are very much in line with Telenor’s belief in spreading the benefits of the Internet in a responsible and safe way. We are excited to see how Montenegro’s project progresses and to see these types of initiatives spread throughout Telenor’s CEE markets,” she added.

First large scale music services in Asia and CEE

The introduction of Spotify and Wimp in the Nordics and Western Europe has significantly increased the popularity of music streaming services. However, lack of high speed networks, handsets and music license rights have limited the development elsewhere. Telenor and Deezer will be the first to launch a music streaming service on a large scale in emerging Asia and CEE regions.

“This agreement represents a major milestone for Telenor in providing premium music content to our customers in emerging markets”, says Anders Morthen Vice-President, Internet Products & Connectivity in Telenor Group. His team, the Internet & Connectivity group in Commercial Development/Digital Services, has had the main responsibility for running the process of selecting and contracting Deezer in tight cooperation with the teams in our local business units.

“We know that local music is important in emerging markets, and the agreement with Deezer secures a wide range of local music content in addition to the global catalogue,” adds Hans Jevanord, Project Director Music, Internet Connectivity & Products, Telenor Group.

Fighting piracy: Telenor and Deezer to provide a catalogue legally licensed from global and local record labels

Music services in CEE and Asia are often provided and consumed illegally. The partnership also marks the start of the fight against piracy as all 18 million tracks (…and counting) are fully legally licensed from global and local record labels, giving our customers the opportunity to consume music services legally.

Launched in Hungary on 4 September

Telenor Hungary introduced Deezer following the completion of its nationwide Hipernet, stable and fast mobile internet, and a quickly growing number of mobile internet subscribers, that doubled within a year time.

“Our customers generate the highest data traffic on the market which implies that they are becoming increasingly active in content consumption. Now we would like to offer them an extra service to make the most of our network and handset portfolio. Globally, mobile music service is a dynamically growing market and we expect to have a significantly rising demand and several tens of thousands of customers using the service also in Hungary,” said Christopher Laska, CEO of Telenor Hungary and announced that more services will follow soon.

Telenor customers in Hungary can test the service without a monthly fee or traffic charges until the end of the year.

First with Deezer in Asia

Deezer services were also launched earlier this year in Thailand, as the first global music streaming service ever in Thailand and Asia. On the Thai ICT Expo event in August, visitors of dtac stand were able to test the service and download the programme to their mobile phones for a free 15-day trial.

The regional marketplace is dominated by the sale of ringback tones. With its web-based technology, Deezer has potential to be a mass-market solution with far greater ease of access, and a particularly important service for fighting piracy and illegal distribution of music.

A Bangladeshi native who just completed 12^th grade, Chowdhury Sadid Alam is the winner of the i-Genius competition, a part of the i-Gen program designed to increase Internet awareness and usage among youth in Bangladesh. The 2011 program was run in cooperation with the Bangladeshi government, Opera Software and the leading Bangladeshi newspaper, and focused on lessening the barriers to the Internet for more than 300,000 people across Bangladesh.

1,000 schools get an i-Gen education

“In 2011, Grameenphone and partners ran 101 i-Gen festivals throughout the country, with the intention of teaching people how to use the Internet in a fun, intriguing and responsible way,” said Audrey Sjøstedt, i-Gen project manager in Telenor Group. “Students from more than 1,000 schools traveled to these festivals and received hands-on Internet training, as well as the chance to experience the very popular i-Genius competition.”

Browsing competition is a hit

The i-Genius competition turned into a main attraction during the festivals. Each participant was given a mobile phone and asked to find answers to trivia questions on the Web. The person who used their phone to answer the greatest number of questions correctly, won.  Out of 10,000 participants, all 102 local i-Geniuses traveled to Dhaka for the final. And it was Chowdhury Sadid Alam who walked away with the title of i-Genius grand master.

“This program is about lowering the mental and social barriers to the Internet. We are showing people how to do things rather than just talking on a theoretical level,” said Kristin Skogen Lund, EVP and Head of Digital Services, during the opening address of the Fornebu event. “As a result of the first year, there are now 102 i-Genius ambassadors throughout all districts of Bangladesh who are spreading information about the Internet in their regions, including the grand master, Sadid.”

Feature phone + Opera Mini = Internet

Bangladesh is a densely populated country with low Internet penetration. However, many people have access to a mobile phone. Basic features phones are most predominant, and the Opera Mini Web browser offers a way for these phones to become a gateway to the Internet. The Bangladeshi government has stated that i-Gen goes hand-in-hand with their initiative to bring the country closer to a digital future.

Spreading the message of responsible Internet use

“By bringing i-Gen to Fornebu, we are first and foremost celebrating the 2011 Bangladesh i-Genius champion, Sadid. But we also want to build awareness and provide insight to employees and stakeholders on what Telenor is doing to bridge the digital divide, and to talk about how the Internet is an enabler in emerging markets,” said Audrey. “We see a parallel here to Telenor Norway’s “Bruk Hue” campaign against digital bullying. Both programs target students with the message of good and responsible use of Internet.”

And the winner is…

Last but not least, who won the i-Genius competition at Fornebu? No surprise to anyone in the audience…Sadid once again proved his super-powered browsing prowess, breezing through the first round of questions, and then answering three of the four questions correctly in the final, in just a matter of seconds.

Read the World Bank report here.

Telenor’s belief in using its core business to make a positive impact in people’s lives is directly in line with this new World Bank report. The report states that developing countries are increasingly well-placed to exploit the benefits of mobile communications. Telenor Pakistan’s easypaisa mobile financial service is a prime example of how the definition of mobile has been redefined, as it now has become a tool to bank the unbanked throughout Pakistan.

Telenor Group’s recent study on Mobile Health, highlighted in the World Bank report, also shows the potential for reducing costs and saving lives through wider adoption of mobile health services.

Read the Telenor and BCG study on mobile health. 

“Our business can help people. We are connecting people to banking services, healthcare, even information on the latest agricultural prices. I am excited to see the World Bank coming out with a report that is in support of our core belief in the power of the mobile phone and its ability to change lives,” said Tom Riege, Head of Government Relations for Telenor Group.

Telenor has previously published its own reports, in cooperation with Boston Consulting Group, on the impact of mobile financial services and mobile health.

Check out our reports on mobile impact. 

 ”There is a growth of new viewing devices. This drives a change in user needs and behaviour; time- and place shifting. The rollout of IPTV and entrance of OTT operators will continue to put pressure on DTH. Now, more than ever, we believe in strengthening the value of our linear TV offering and DTH as a distribution channel, by giving the user a simple, intuitive and contextual user interface, with seamless integration of linear, self/auto recorded and on demand TV content, anytime and anywhere. We will create a unique TV offering that will fulfil key customer needs,” adds Hofbauer.

“NDS offers end-to-end solutions for the pay television industry, including conditional access. That said, Conax is, and will be, Canal Digital’s provider of conditional access – NDS software solutions may be seen as an opportunity and not disruptive for Conax,” underlines Patrik Hofbauer.

Delivering the best TV experience 

Chief Product & Market Officer, Tone Krohn Clausen, explains why Canal Digital DTH needs a new generation platform for its DTH service:

“We need to differentiate Canal Digital, making us able to rapidly meet customer needs with new service offerings. Canal Digital DTH must provide the user with an effortless, intuitive and visually engaging TV experience that increases the TV-experience and the value for money. Finally, this will position Canal Digital DTH for leveraging our linear TV position and utilizing the potential in OTT services and connected devices. Canal Digital is to be a part of everyday life in Nordic homes, and our goal is to make it easy for our customers to find, access and enjoy the content they want; where, when and how they want it. With this next generation platform, we will truly work towards our vision, which is to deliver the best TV experience.”

“Ability to scroll into the ‘past’ or ‘future’”

NDS Snowflake, the name of the technology, will provide the basis for the user interface to be implemented across all devices as part of the Canal Digital service. NDS Snowflake enables unified, intuitive navigation of content and services that centres on linear programming with the ability to scroll into the ‘past’ or ‘future’, providing fluid discovery of both catch-up and on-demand content, all through a consistent branded experience with integrated programme recommendations and applications.

“In providing a wholly managed service for Canal Digital, we are combining our experience and technical capability to extend our role as solutions provider further than ever before. But more significantly, the approach taken by Canal Digital shows market innovation and progression, to hosted and cloud-based technologies that will enable future-proofed platforms, optimized resources and scalability,” says Dr. Abe Peled, Chairman and CEO, NDS Group.

About NDS

NDS is a leading global provider of end-to-end software solutions for the pay television industry with 5,300 employees. Over one-third of the world’s digital pay-TV households use NDS solutions. Clients include many of the largest cable, satellite and broadband pay-TV operators, including BSkyB, DIRECTV, Sky Deutschland, Sky Italy and UPC. NDS middleware has been deployed in more than 170 million devices.

NDS RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

NDS is now part of Cisco. Visit Cisco’s website for more information  

About Canal Digital

Canal Digital today offers over 130 TV channels to end customers. Close to 1 million DTH households across the Nordics choose Canal Digital as their entertainment platform.

Canal Digital has a strong HD position and presented 3D-content already in 2010. Through the service Canal Digital GO, customers are offer video on demand (VOD) and Web TV. Customers can also access the music streaming-service WiMP. Canal Digital AS is 100 % owned by Telenor Broadcast Holding, and has approximately 290 employees.

Canal Digital AS is led by CEO Patrik Hofbauer, who runs the Canal Digital companies in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.

Visit Canal Digital website

All radio equipment operates on certain frequencies – mobile networks, television, radio… To avoid interference, the distribution of frequencies is heavily regulated and the frequencies are distributed based on licenses. There are frequencies that are not granted to anyone – simply because they are still available, or because they are deliberately left as the belt, or zone between frequencies, ensuring that they don’t “touch”, and interfere.

Cognitive radio means more spectrum

The cognitive radio equipment is able to notice a frequency that is currently available and switch to it automatically. The use of cognitive equipment is thus both a technology and regulatory topic.
“Cognitive radio gives an opportunity to think about spectrum in a new way and ensure a better use of the existing frequencies,” Lehne says. This is certainly a hot topic, as the need for limited spectrum increases with the society’s need to be connected anytime, anywhere.

“Telenor is, like all operators, interested in getting more spectrum. In that sense, cognitive radio brings potential for our business. At the same time we shouldn’t forget that such an opportunistic access to spectrum would decrease the value of the existing licenses that Telenor pays for and it increases the competition, by enabling new competitors to easily get access to frequencies,” Lehne says, explaining the business opportunities and threats.

Part of the EU project QoSMOS

Lehne and Grøndalen have submitted their paper together with colleagues MacKenzie, Noguet and Berg, from BT (UK) and CEA (France). Together they are part of the EU financed project QoSMOS (Quality of Service and Mobility driven Cognitive radio systems). The project has been going on for more than two years and is about to end in December 2012. The aim was to explore possibilities and systems for use of cognitive radio, both on the technical and the commercial side. Telenor has been in charge for defining possible scenarios for use of cognitive radio, and will be involved in business model analysis and deployment guidelines.

Capacity reserve

USA has opened for opportunistic use of the parts of the TV spectrum that the TV network doesn’t use in an area due to interference problems that would otherwise occur (the so called “white space”). UK is about to do the same. At the same time, they defined technical limits for use of the white space to avoid disturbance.

“We started with the values defined in USA and explored possible scenarios – what we can reach based on those values and how we can use it,” says Grøndalen and explains that one of the possible scenarios is the so called cellular extension scenario.

“Let’s imagine the situation when the public traffic stops in the rush hour- you suddenly have a need for more capacity than normally. In that situation it is good to have extra capacity reserve,” Lehne adds.
In another scenario, cognitive radio could be used for wireless hot spots – to expand the capacity, when needed.

If everyone has free access to it, how can one be sure to get the reserve capacity when it’s needed?

“Obviously, many players will want to use the same capacity, so the number of those who can use it will have to be regulated, maybe through some kind of secondary licenses,” Grøndalen explains. “Or perhaps we will be able to buy extra capacity for two hours, in some kind of “free spectrum stock exchange”.

Inevitable and not that far future

The equipment exists, but it is not standardized for the commercial use in the network yet. The need for more spectrum is obviously present. USA and soon UK are already counting on cognitive radio in their spectrum policy and there is a momentum for this in EU. According to Grøndalen and Lehne, cognitive radio is inevitable future. In WiFI, where the use is simple, it could happen in a couple of years. For larger main stream use, it will take at least five years.

“We are preparing; exploring both the technology and the possible business models. We are making sketches for the possible cognitive radio future,” Lehne says.
Towards the end of 2012, Grøndalen and Lehne will be working on the possible business models with the colleagues from British Telecom, taking part in QoSMOS. Stay tuned to learn more about the possibilities of cognitive radio for Telenor and telecom industry as the project gets to its end.

The principles were released this past spring, during a launch event held in London. Telenor’s Head of Corporate Responsibility, Mai Oldgard, attended the event and participated in a panel discussion on the topic of children’s rights in the marketplace. In the now published report from the launch event, Telenor is listed as a “good practice example” on this topic.

“Telenor recognizes that while mobile communications can make a positive impact on children, it also makes them vulnerable. Telenor seeks a balance,” said Mai Oldgard. Telenor’s SMS service to provide health information for pregnant women and new mothers in Bangladesh is an example of how the company uses its business to make a positive impact. While, Telenor’s campaign to fight again digital bullying in Norway is an example of how the company works to lessen the harm that may results from its services.

“Telenor fully supports the 10 principles and will continue to work to respect and support children’s rights in all of our global operations,” said Mai.

Read the 10 Children’s Rights and Business Principles. 

With the renewal of telecom license, Grameenphone has entered a new era of its successful operations in Bangladesh.

Operating since 1996

Grameenphone first received its license in 1996 to operate cellular telephone services in Bangladesh for 15 years. Since then the company has become the largest telecom operator in the country with almost 40 million customers.

The tenure of the license expired November last year but the renewal was delayed due to different legal and administrative complexities.  Both the company and regulator went to court to get legal interpretation on the issues.

The government of Bangladesh recently decided to renew the license of Grameenphone and three other mobile operators before the payment of second installment of the renewal fee.  With this renewal, Grameenphone has secured its operation in Bangladesh for the next 15 years and will continue to provide high quality products and services.

A mobile Internet leader in Asia

“Telenor Group and its Business Units have, for several years now, focused on the importance of mobile Internet in Asia, and we have run pilot projects in this area to find the best solutions that meet the needs of our customers,” says Sissel Henriette Larsen, Vice President and Head of Services, Telenor Asia. “By starting the MIA project now, we are making a formal move to become leaders in mobile Internet in Asia. We want to tap into this explosive growth and the best Internet experience to customers.”

The MIA project, under the Telenor Digital Services umbrella, includes two main focus areas: “Build the Base” and “Smartphone”. Each focus area shares the goal of establishing Telenor as a leader in providing mobile Internet. However, the two work streams differ in terms of who is targeted and how.

Accelerating smartphone growth in Asia

The Smartphone work stream within in MIA project is newly headed by Mark (Amarit) Sukhavanij, effective July 1, 2012. Mark was previously Head of Market Division for dtac.

Mark believes that customers in Asia are looking for a total smartphone experience. That means that they expect a good experience as soon as they enter the retail store. They expect the right price plans for their mobile browsing needs. And they want applications for their device that are simple to use and simultaneously enhance their experience.

“Telenor is well-positioned to meet the needs of smartphone customers in Asia,” says Mark. “For many in Asia, the mobile phone is their only gateway to the Web. Once they become Internet users, it is our job to enable the transition to a smartphone for an even richer Web experience.”

Build the base

In tandem with the smartphone work stream is the focus on building a base of mobile Internet customers in Telenor’s Asian markets. This work stream targets the customers who are new or unfamiliar with the Internet. In order to bring the Internet to the millions of feature phones spanning Asia, Telenor has partnered with Opera Software to distribute the Opera Mini mobile browser.

“Our ambition is to distribute Internet to the masses, and Opera Mini serves as one of the tools that can help us make this happen,” says Even Reitan, project manager for the Build a base work stream. “Our proposition to Asian customers is centered on our partnerships with Opera Mini and Facebook. Facebook is often the number one reason that people want to get online with their phones, and Opera Mini helps make it happen in an easy and affordable way.”

Telenor targets the entire spectrum

As the numbers indicate, the long predicted mobile Internet explosion in Asia has begun, and Telenor sees the importance of positioning itself as a leader from the outset, according to Sissel Henriette Larsen. She explains, “This is why we want to offer solutions that enable the Asian mass market to easily access the mobile Internet, whether it’s on their 10-year-old feature phones or their brand new smartphones. Telenor has the best solution for them.”

Finding the right business model

The hold-up for turning telematics into a standard feature in your car is largely due to the automotive industry’s lack of incentive. The business model to justify the expense of an advanced blending of computer and wireless technology, along with the organization of operations required to make it happen, has evaded the industry for a long time. That is…until the European Union got involved.

“Automotive telematics has finally reached the tipping point, thanks largely due to the European Commission’s initiative for eCall pushing for a regulation which is very likely to be adopted by Parliament and then coming into force in all new vehicles to be launched after 2015/2016,” explained Rémí.

What is eCall?

eCall is a European initiative to create a rapid emergency response system that’s activated when motor vehicles are in trouble. Telematics solutions such as what Telenor Connexion has previously done for Volvo (with their OnCall solution), in which the cellular network is used for communication between car and emergency response centre, are the models upon which the idea for eCall is built.

With the arrival of eCall now imminent, auto manufacturers are hopping on board the telematics bandwagon and seeking out the expertise of companies such as Telenor Connexion, whose years of experience are now paying off. Today, approximately 50 percent of Telenor Connexion’s revenues come from the automotive sector.

277 million connected vehicles by 2020

According to industry analyst “Analysys  Mason”, the global market for machine-to-machine (M2M) connections in the automotive industry will grow from 21.6 million in 2010 to 277  million in 2020. Of the projected 277 million, approximately 49 percent is expected to consist of connected cars, while fleet management solutions make up the remainder.

“eCall is just one of the reasons why car telematics is picking up speed. The car industry is also seeing opportunities to reduce costs, such as through remote vehicle diagnostics, and to create new services with potential of new revenues, such as subscriptions for fleet management of cars, insurances based on driving profile or entertainment in the car,” said Rémí. “Now with the rising popularity of electrical vehicles, Telenor Connexion and its expertise in this field are getting noticed.  Because of the huge importance of battery for electrical cars, remote services for monitoring battery level and usage over lifetime makes the use of connectivity indispensable.  As we see it, telematics and electric cars go hand-in-hand.”

Nissan Leaf sparks new era of electric cars

The launch of the fully electric Nissan Leaf sparked a new era of electric cars. Telenor Connexion was selected by Nissan to provide the connectivity for the Leaf in Europe and Singapore.

“We were able to offer Nissan a customized solution that fit their needs,” said Rémí. “They were interested in a deactivated SIM solution, allowing for customer to control the activation on Nissan’s web site ensuring the respect of privacy. Once activated, the customer can reap the benefits of telematics services having the best experience of driving an electrical car.”

Following their success with Nissan Leaf, Telenor Connexion was approached by Renault, who was looking for a robust SIM solution for both their electric and fuel cars. Renault wanted to avoid the plastic SIM card solution typically found in mobile devices.

“We started the process with Renault back in 2009, and worked with their M2M module supplier Sierra Wireless to develop a solution in which the SIM is embedded into the M2M module and then secured, so that it can live longer and withstand more duress in the car,” said Rémí.

Understanding economy of scale

Telenor Connexion understands that car manufacturers are not interested in multiple solutions for their line of cars. They want a one-size-fits all solution that is flexible, durable and helps them cut costs while simultaneously enhancing their customer relationship.

“The SIMs are the same, whether it’s for a fuel vehicle or for an electrical vehicle. When the SIM gets embedded into the M2M modem, nobody knows what type of vehicle it will be used in, whether it’s professional fleet management or a personal electrical vehicle. Then a few months later a customer buys the car with this SIM in it, registers for services and the car company starts to provide a telematics service adapted to that car owner’s needs,” said Rémí.

A leader in connecting electric cars

Telenor Connexion is a leader in the automotive telematics industry, simply in terms of years of experience. Through its partnerships with Nissan and Renault, Telenor Connexion can also claim its leadership in providing solutions for electrical vehicles.

“Telematics was previously something that was offered in the premium car segment, a luxury that was not an easily justifiable expense for the manufacturer. But today, with eCall coming, things are different and telematics is becoming an integral part of all new cars,” said Rémí.

*1677 developed into a Mobile Application

The “*1677 Farmer Information Superhighway” is a service where Thai farmers can access useful information on agricultural developments by receiving daily SMSes on their mobile phones. This service has recently been extended with a “Farmer Information” application available on iPhone and iPad.

The application offers up-to-date agricultural information such as comparing product prices at the major markets in Bangkok. This enables farmers and consumers to keep track of the market development and to make the right buying and selling decision at the right time. The application aims to pave the way for online marketing or e-commerce in the future.

The Farmer Information application won the reward in the category of “Business Enabler Project”.

Continuous improvements of recycling programme

The second award in the category ICT for CSR (Information and Communications Technology for Corporate Social Responsibility), went to the improvements of the recycling programme “Mobile Battery for Life”. The programme encourages everyone to drop their old mobile phones and old mobile equipment in the battery boxes provided by dtac for environmentally-friendly recycling and disposal process. dtac is the only telecom service provider in Thailand having a recycling campaign continuously for several years.

The extended benefit of the campaign is that from every 5,000 pieces of old mobile phones and old mobile equipment that is collected, dtac will subsidize with a cow; and for every 10,000 pieces collected, dtac will subsidize with a buffalo. The cows and buffaloes that are saved from being slaughtered will support farmers in the *1677 Farmer Information Superhighway network. This way the extended concept of Mobile Battery for Life enables the two projects to have mutual benefits.

“We are really honored to receive these awards and will continue working with responsible initiatives that can bring the benefits of information and telecommunication technologies to the society as a whole,“ said Perapong Klinla-or, Head of Corporate Responsibility in dtac.

The ICT Excellence Awards

The ICT Excellence Awards has been handed out by Thailand Management Association since 2008. The purpose is to remunerate and support organizations with outstanding information and communication technology initiatives, to encourage continuous development in Thailand.  The jury consist of committees from leading companies in Thailand.

Related articles:

Read more about the *1677 service and the successful results of a user

Get more information about the Mobile Battery for Life initiative

Online Safety for Children initiative

Telenor Group, along with approximately 30 other leading ICT players in the Internet value chain (including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Vodafone), have joined the EC’s coalition to make the Internet a better place for kids. Telenor was invited to join in mid-2011 due to its experience in child online safety, and has since immersed itself in all five work groups that form this initiative. Together, the industry is attempting to create a more uniform approach to protecting children online.

Telenor brings its experience to Brussels

“Telenor’s business units have developed many solutions to help give parents more control and protect children from inappropriate content. It is this experience – including our child sexual abuse filter and parental controls – that we are bringing to the table in Brussels,” explained Ana Brodtkorb, Project Manager of the EU initiative on online safety and Telenor’s representative in the coalition.

“We are discussing possible measures that can be implemented industry-wide. One thing we are considering is Web-based button, so we can make it easier for end-users to report offensive or harmful content to an appropriate back office with the click of a button,” she added.

Commissioner Kroes puts online safety high on agenda

The initiative to make the Internet a better place for kids is high on the European Commission’s Digital Agenda. EU Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes is leading the effort and has asked the work groups to draft suggestions for simple and robust reporting tools, age-appropriate privacy settings, wider use of content classification, greater availability of parental controls and effective takedown of child abuse material.

The working groups are preparing their recommendations for Commissioner Kroes, to be presented on July 11 and implemented from August 1, with a year-end deadline for the affected companies. The responsibility for actual implementation of these new child safety measures rests with the individual company, and in Telenor’s case, with its individual business units in Europe.

Dedicated resources required

“Implementing these child safety measures will require a comprehensive effort on part of our business units. It requires technical skills and financial resources, as well as cooperation with relevant expert NGOs or local law enforcement,” said Ana. “This is a cause that we believe in. Our business units have already taken several steps in the right direction, and the EU is now elevating this issue and alerting the entire industry as to just how serious this challenge is for everyone.”

Industry initiative in tandem

In addition to its involvement in the EC initiative, Telenor has joined an industry-driven initiative called “ICT principles” that aims to create principles for the “safe use of connected devices and online services by children and young people”. This is a long-term project that is self-driven by many of the same participants as in the EC initiative.

“We are active in this area. Telenor takes responsibility for the harm that can result from its services, which is why we are heavily involved with governments and our peers to create preventative solutions that lessen the harm,” said Ana. “Through our active involvement with the industry and the EU, we are helping to create a safer Internet for our children.”

Read more about how Telenor creates a safe user experience on mobile and Internet

“Today’s youth are the digital frontrunners, and if you look at the statistics, this is where smartphone penetration is at its highest. Plus, it’s more exciting to talk to youth because they discover the new services much faster,” said Mona Hovland Jakobsen.

More than six months have passed since Nag and Jakobsen first met this group of students. The findings from this project generated great interest throughout Telenor, and these researchers have given multiple presentations internally. This study also piqued the interest of VG Helg, the weekend magazine edition of Norway’s largest newspaper. A team of VG reporters joined Nag and Jakobsen during their June 7 presentation for the Akademiet students.

Teacher expresses initial skepticism

“You are Norway’s new oil; society’s most important resource. The next 30 years are more about you than about me,” explained teacher Andreas Brekke to his students, prior to the presentation. “At first I was skeptical to letting you participate in this project, but through this process and experience, I felt that we’ve been included and listened to…and that Telenor was genuinely interested in what we had to say.”

A resource, not test rabbits

Telenor’s Head of Research and Future Studies, Bjørn Taale Sandberg, was also in attendance and was quick to thank the students for lending their expertise to Telenor researchers. “You are a resource, not test rabbits. We want to understand how you use the services that we deliver and why, so that we can deliver what you need,” he said.

A quick review of the results

During the presentation of the results, Jakobsen and Nag told the students that it’s the services that are available on multiple screens that they use the most. They are a typical iPhone gang, with 72% carrying the Apple phone. And that voice and SMS are still important services for them, despite the onslaught of Internet-based options.

“We thought that youth used a wider variety of services than they actually do. When it comes to communication there are four main channels: normal voice calls on the mobile phone, SMS, Facebook and Skype. There isn’t much use of the so-called new and cool communications services,” explained Jakobsen.

Facebook proved to be overwhelmingly popular back in December, and Nag asked the class if that was still true. Heads nodded in assent, and the teacher (Brekke) interrupted, asking the students if Facebook is now the authority on when they should come to class. Due to a message posted on the class’s Facebook group from one of the students, all students were under the false impression that English class was cancelled for the day, resulting in nobody showing up. Brekke stated, “Facebook is not the authority for when you should come to class or not.”

What the students had to say

After their presentation, Nag and Jakobsen turned the conversation back to the students, asking them for their opinion on the findings.

“Some things have changed since the workshop,” one student announced. “Instagram has now become one of the most used apps. We publish photos and follow each others’ lives…and it’s easier to use on the fly.” Twitter has increased in popularity as well. One girl explained that it’s the best way to stay in touch with celebrities. An overwhelming number of student said that they follow Justin Bieber’s Twitter account to “feel close to him”.

VG wants to know what the students thought

“It was fun! Cool that they are interested in what we do, and it’s exciting to see the results,” explained one student to the VG reporter. Another student said that this project made him think about things he doesn’t usually think about, and it gave insight into how dependent he is on communications services.

Why study youth?

Jakobsen and Nag explain that by studying youth, Telenor can better understand emerging communication habits that may have an impact on the telecommunications industry. Today’s teens are data hungry and quite knowledgeable about how to use new Internet-based services. The pre-teens emulate their behavior, while the parents and grandparents simply try to catch up. It’s a generation that was born with the Internet and they can’t understand a life in which Facebook isn’t always a click away.

“These are future important customers,” said Wenche Nag. “We want to understand the communications practices that are developing. It’s not only about understanding the here and now, but also to get some indication on what’s emerging. And 16-year-olds are a good place to start.”

Going beyond Norway…

Jakobsen and Nag hope to take their study on youth to other Telenor markets, including Asia. Norway, they explain, is like a small laboratory for them, but they hope by expanding their research to the rest of the world they will better understand the differences between how youth communicate in Bangladesh versus Hungary, for instance.

“Without knowledge about the needs of today’s youth, we risk falling totally behind. We have a strategic incentive to stay close to the end-customer, and if we want to do that, we need to understand what’s going on with them,” concluded Jakobsen. “This is a generation that will be very frustrated if they pick up a phone that’s only a phone, so we need to be prepared to meet their needs now and five years from now.”

What the Tap2Pay users say about paying with their phones

Response to the Tap2Pay trial was largely positive, with 84 percent of the test group reporting that it was easy to use. They found it faster to pay by mobile phone and liked not having to use a pin code. One participant noted that it felt “futuristic, like science fiction” to pay with the mobile phone. An overwhelming 97 percent of the participants said that they want to use this type of service when it’s launched.

More merchants and more phones key to success of NFC

“What we learned from our pilot project was that mobile payment is something that people want and will use, if the solutions are adequate,” explained Viktoria Erngard, Vice President, Financial Services in Telenor Group. “But in order to succeed in the long run, we need to get as many merchants on board as possible and offer more NFC-enabled phones.”

One person in the test group responded that “if it was available on a smartphone” he would have used mobile payment all the time and not used a bank card at all.

Merchants have more time for customer interaction

Store merchants were largely positive as well. Most felt that the speed and simplicity of the service was convenient, as it gave them more time to pay attention to the customer instead of the transaction.  The service created a “buzz” among customers, and one merchant reported that the mobile payment solution became “the talk of the town”.

Purchase history

The average test group user made a total of six purchases during the May to August trial, resulting in a total average spending of 400 Norwegian kroner per person. Most of the transactions occurred at the convenience store Deli de Luca, a chain that sells food, beverages and other small items for people on-the-go.

Technical difficulties

Approximately half of all users did experience some technical issues during the trial, typically regarding software installation or lack of contact between the phone and the terminal in the shop. There was a dedicated customer service team available during the trial period, and 86 percent of the people who sought support reported that they received adequate assistance.

Addressing securing concerns

One of the main concerns voiced by the test group users revolved around the issue of security. Testers were concerned that if their phone was stolen, there would be no barriers to fraudulent use of the phone for payment, as there is no pin code.  However, most believed the addition of a pin code to be the answer to this concern.

Feedback critical to future launch plans

Telenor is taking all of the feedback from the trial to heart, and incorporating it in future launch plans.

“Security is a very important issue to address going forward, and we will. People were skeptical when bank cards were first introduced, so there’s also a learning curve involved with any new technology,” said Erngard. “This trial also told us that we shouldn’t be too quick to target a certain demographic with NFC. We initially assumed it would be young people who want to try new things, but we actually found that this is interesting for everyone. There is just a cool factor, as well as level of convenience, that’s appealing when paying with a phone.”

More operators, more banks and more merchants

According to Erngard, in order for NFC to become an everyday part of our lives, Telenor cannot go at it alone. It is a payment solution that requires more operators, more banks and more merchants to be on board in order for it to spread and become truly convenient for users.

“We need new merchants, new offers, new things all the time, or else it dies. This can’t only be Telenor and DNB; everyone needs to be on board,” said Erngard.

Telenor is aiming for a full roll-out of NFC services in Oslo and surrounding area(s) sometime in 2013, and foresees NFC as a viable option in many of its markets in the years to come.

A digital scrapbook of your life

Each member of the digital culture class, taught by Professor Jill Walker Rettberg – a leading mind in the world of blogging – was invited to install a test application on their smartphones. The application was meant to serve as a “self-writing scrapbook” and once the students were signed up, the app began to track their actions, from text messages and voice calls to photos taken.  Some students referred to it as surveillance, others called it a digital diary.

“The application used in this pilot project collected information on the usage of the mobile phone and presented it back in an easy-to-understand format,” said Beathe Due, Media Research Director, Research and Future Studies in Telenor Group. “The main goal of the project is to build tools to increase digital literacy, especially for students and youth. All the information collected from this project going forward will be anonymized and gathered in an open database that Telenor and the student participants can access and use, so that they can truly understand their own data trail.”

Crowdsourcing mobile usage

Due refers to this project as “crowdsourcing mobile usage”, as she is outsourcing the analysis of this data to the people who are actually generating it. Through this project Telenor is creating a database of information on smartphone usage to which the company would otherwise not have access.

“This is data that is voluntarily generated by the people participating in the project,” explained Due. “It’s informed consent; they know what they are sharing with us and they also know that they are getting this information back.”

An expanding database of smartphone information

As the project expands to other groups of students in other parts of the world, Due envisions an ever-expanding database filled with anonymous data on smartphone usage that Telenor, along with everyone participating in the research project, can access.

“This data gives us insight into what people are actually doing with their smartphones, beyond voice and SMS. Our study will tell us when they use all kinds of mobile services, such as Facebook, for how long and how often during the day. I believe that this will lead us to new ideas and a better understanding of our customers,” explained Due.

“At the same time, giving this data back to the users is a matter of social responsibility. People need to understand what they leave behind when using the Internet and this project allows them to see it, use it, analyze it and hopefully innovate. It’s a win-win situation. We can help increase digital competency, and we need people with digital competence and confidence to help analyze this data,” she added.

The students respond

“We wanted to investigate how it feels to be under surveillance, voluntarily,” said one student on why he felt it was important to participate. In general, the students expressed concerns over privacy and experienced a heightened awareness of just how much they were sharing. “It scared us,” seemed to be a mutual conclusion among the participants.

As the pilot is now wrapped, Due plans to officially launch this project in the fall, with the intention of expanding it to students in Asia. She and her research team are currently investigating different types of applications that can be used for the project. They are seeking an application that gives value back to the participants and allows for easy data analysis.

Give back the data

“In my opinion, it is important to raise awareness of the data we leave behind. There is a trend towards opening up the data that companies collect and giving it back. My goal is to create theories and new practices. Let’s use this data, create awareness and help build competence. Personal data is a currency, and I want young people to know that, learn from it and use it,” concluded Due.

Through this partnership, Telenor will develop best practice anti-corruption solutions for the Hungarian SME sector. Leveraging the NGO’s unique competence and Telenor’s practical experience stemming from its international presence, the partners will develop a comprehensive e-learning material to enable Hungarian SMEs to enforce the principles of fair business behaviour in their daily operation.

TI observes corruption risks in business elite
According to the latest Transparency International’s Corruption perception index, Hungary is ranked 54 out of 183 countries. Furthermore, The National Integrity Study indicates that the relationship between the political and business elite bears high corruption risks in common business transactions such as bankruptcy, liquidation, procurements, and obtaining official permits.

One can do fair business and be successful
“We want to show that it is possible to do fair business and be a successful company. That is why we have joined Transparency International’s Corporate Supporters’ Forum, where only the companies that comply with the high standards of the civil organization are selected,” says Christopher Laska, Telenor Hungary CEO.

Developing e-learning kit for SMEs
Hungarian business sector has relatively high proportion of micro and small enterprises: The business sector encompasses 200,000 companies without legal personality (typically partnerships, where owners have limited liability) and one million registered sole proprietors as well.
Laska explains that Telenor wants to lead by example and help the companies that aim for zero tolerance of corruption, but they lack the international background and expertise. Together with the NGO, Telenor is going to develop an e-learning kit to help Hungarian small and middle sized enterprises in ethical operation. Through everyday situation typical for Hungary, it will show ethical dilemmas and point to right decisions.

Telenor promotes culture of fair business practices
“Corruption ruins reputation that had been built with great efforts. It creates an unfair business environment that decreases effectiveness, productivity, development and healthy competition of entire sectors. It is not only dangerous for single companies, but for the whole country as well. We hope that more and more companies will recognize this and join our efforts,” said Christopher Laska, CEO of Telenor Hungary

“I’m very pleased that Telenor has joined our Corporate Supporters Forum for Hungarian companies taking zero corruption tolerance seriously. Our partnership with Telenor sets a model to follow, as Telenor has not only committed to its own ethical operation but also agreed to promote the culture of fair business practices in the Hungarian business community”, said Noémi Alexa, Managing Director of Transparency International Hungary.

Read the National Integrity Study of Transparency International Hungary

How much can the earth withstand?

“Two tons of CO2 per capita per year. That’s what the earth can stand. To get to this point, you need the information and communications technology (ICT) industry and the solutions that we provide to live a more virtual life,” said Jan Kristensen, Director Climate Change, Telenor Group.

Most people associate living a more sustainable life with doing less of the things they typically do, such as driving, flying, eating meat, using paper. But when it comes to mobile technology, being more connected is actually a contributing factor to a more climate-conscious way of living.

One year of mobile services in Sweden = one liter of diesel fuel

In 2011, Telenor took at look at the CO2 footprint per mobile subscription and compared it with the total CO2 emissions per capita. In Sweden, for example, each mobile subscription resulted in 2.3 kg of CO2 as compared to the nation’s average of 5.3 tons per person.

The ICT industry is part of the solution

“One year of mobile service for one person in Sweden has the same environmental impact as the production and sale of one hamburger or one liter of diesel. This shows that services provided by the ICT industry are insignificant when compared to the total carbon footprint per capita for one full year of life. The ICT industry is not the problem; it’s part of the solution,” said Kristensen.

Kristensen explained that making more conscious decisions about using virtual solutions, such as video conferences instead of an airplane trips, can lead to a more sustainable life. New services such as mobile health, mobile financial services and machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, are emerging solutions that make choosing the virtual life easier and more realistic.

“Mobile health solutions that enable the elderly to live in their own homes longer, mobile financial services that eliminate trips to the bank, and the creation of the virtual office to eliminate your daily drive to work are all solutions that can help us achieve the two ton per person goal for sustainable living,” explained Kristensen.

Becoming a more efficient industry-wide

Though the ICT industry is an enabler of solutions that lead to more sustainable living, that doesn’t mean that the industry is off the hook in terms of improving the efficiencies in their own operations. Telenor has set the ambitious target to reduce the internal carbon intensity of its operations by 40 percent by 2017, as compared to 2008. Just over three years later, the commitments made in 2008 are holding strong in Telenor Group and the company is on its way to meeting the targets.

“When we look at our CO2 emissions in 2011, we see that our operational efficiencies are now producing results. In many of our operations, this is due to the network upgrades that result in less energy consumption,” said Kristensen. “If we look at the CO2 output in our operations in terms of revenue, we see that we have achieved 30 percent of our 2017 targets. We are on the right track.”

Read Telenor’s latest available figures on CO2 emissions.

ICT enables low carbon living

“The telecom industry’s CO2 footprint is set to grow five percent annually, no matter our best efficiency efforts. This is simply due to the natural expansion of the industry, as more and more people get connected. But according to the SMART  2020 industry report, the natural increase of our industry’s CO2 footprint is countered by our ability to help other sectors reduce their emissions,” said Kristensen.

“SMART 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age” is a report that was published by The Climate Group and the Global Sustainability Initiative in 2008. It states that by applying ICT solutions to global infrastructure and industry, there are far greater opportunities for emissions savings. The ICT sector could contribute to a reduction of global CO2 emissions by as much as 15 percent by 2020.

The road to a more sustainable way of life

“The SMART 2020 report is confirmation that companies such as Telenor have a significant role to play in creating a future low carbon society and helping the citizens of the world to live more sustainability within their two ton per person per year limits,” concluded Kristensen. “You may have to give up a few hamburgers and a few trips in the car, but one thing that you can use more of without hurting our earth is ICT services.”

Read more about what Telenor is doing to fight climate change in the Sustainability Report.

Zhao watched as a teacher was projected on a screen and consumed the attention of 40 students between age four to six. After just a few minutes, the students were swaying away with their virtual teacher, singing different Bangla and English nursery rhymes. Zhao expressed amazement at what Grameenphone and Jaago Foundation had achieved with their first Online School in Bangladesh. The Online school currently has a total of 76 students, divided in two groups.

Unique yet simple

“I have travelled throughout the world, however, I have never seen such an educational initiative anywhere,” said Houlin Zhao.

The concept of “Online School” is very simple. A teacher conducts a class from a distant location using video conferencing technology and at the local level there are moderators who help the teacher with logistics. These moderators are from the local community and have no previous teaching experience.

Ensuring quality education for rural children

This ground-breaking initiative aims to assure quality education for underprivileged students who live in rural areas and are unable to go to school. In addition, the Online School promotes teacher development, as the classroom moderators gain the necessary experience to someday teach these classes independently.

“This initiative shows how telecommunications can make a real difference. It is a very good example of Telenor’s strategy to enable, in which we base our corporate responsibility projects on our core competence. By working with partners we can create social benefits based on our technology and know-how, such as the Online School in Tongi,” said Sidsela Nyebak, Project Manager for Corporate Responsibility, Telenor Group.

Online School success

In an early measure of the Online School’s success, grades of the online school students were compared with two demographically similar but non-virtual schools. The performance of the students is comparable, indicating that the students are meeting their targets, despite their distance education.

A step towards delivering quality education to the underprivileged

“Ensuring quality education to underprivileged children is a challenging job in Bangladesh. Through Online School we are exploring a new way of educating underprivileged children. If it proves successful, this could be a model can be used across Bangladesh and beyond, to ensure that even rural children receive quality education,” said Kazi Monirul Kabir, Chief Communications Officer, Grameenphone.

As the panelists opened the plenary session by addressing the audience of corporate and governmental leaders of the entire region, it became clear that while much progress has been made, there is still a way to go both in East Asia and elsewhere.

Women may be admitted into politics, but lack influence in business

Aung San Suu Kyi opened by asking: “What can we not contribute? I think women can contribute in every way, but we are not always allowed to.” She highlighted the fact that the Asia-Pacific region has seen many powerful women in political top positions, but the female participation in economic activities is far lower.

“In Burma, women are poorly represented both in politics and in business. Before our recent by-elections, we had only 15 MPs (Member of Parlament) among the 600 in the national assembly. Afterwards, we added another 13, but how can 28 members convince the other 572 to change?” she said. Suu Kyi’s remarks followed the general position she conveyed about her home land and the attention Myanmar is attracting from entrepreneurs and businesses after the softening of trade sanctions against the South-East Asia country.

Empowering and stimulating entrepreneurship among women

Rokia Afzal Rahman offered her perspective from Bangladesh and its successful micro-financing projects that have enabled women in rural areas to acquire funds to start up their own small businesses. Helene Gayle, whose organization is involved in poverty alleviation projects across the world, emphasized the empowerment of women as a crucial step towards reducing poverty.

Equality means higher competitiveness

Baksaas had been invited to contribute on the panel as a representative of international business, and of a business headquartered in Scandinavia – a region renowned for its unmatched equality both socio-economically and gender wise.

“The Scandinavian countries have arrived at a rather sustainable economic model, and many – including the World Economic Forum – have aimed to explain why it is so. Egalitarianism is deeply ingrained in these societies with the aim of redistributing wealth and ensuring equal opportunities for all. Gender equality is an obvious and natural part of this. This is not to say we have solved this, but we have taken some steps in the right direction,” Baksaas said in his introductory address.

In his comments throughout the panel discussion, he explained the main reasons for the gender balance in Scandinavian economies: education, mindset and affirmative action.

“Equality is an enabler for competitiveness. Companies and societies depend on top talent to succeed – regardless of gender, nationality or religion. A key here is education. When women and men have equal access to education, you get a crop of highly skilled potential female leaders. You cannot exclude 50% of talents when looking to fill a position. Equality simply makes good business sense,” Baksaas said. Pioneering legislative and policy work to promote gender equality in all aspects of society was cited as another key reason for Scandinavia’s gender balance.

Suu Kyi to Norway in mid-June

Mrs Suu Kyi, who has been in house arrest in Myanmar for more than two decades, is scheduled to receive her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and hold her Nobel lecture on 16 June in Oslo.

Submarine cables are part of the overall telecom infrastructure

“The submarine cables are integrated as part of our overall telecom infrastructure, connected to the land-based network through about 550 installations. In many places, the submarine cables are integrated in a system for backup infrastructure, and thereby playing an important role for the overall network security,” says Svend Hopland, Chief Engineer-IP&Optical Transport, Telenor Norway Technology.

Today, as much as 25 percent of the fiber cables in Telenor’s transport network are submarine cables. The 4,500 kilometers of cables resting on Norway’s seabed are equivalent to nearly twice the distance of the Norwegian coastal line and comprise an important part of Norway’s network infrastructure.

A leader in coastal installations

Hopland and his colleague, Magnar Greve, have helped Telenor achieve international recognition as one of the best operators of coastal installations. Hopland is considered Telenor’s foremost expert in this area, and is the main developer of a computer system for remote controlled installation of submarine cables.

From his office at Fornebu, Norway, Hopland controls the installation of cables anywhere along the Norwegian coast. He works closely with Greve who sets up the sailing plan and manages the operational work on the cable ship. Hopland plans the routes and controls the installation of the submarine cables from his computer remotely. The vessels are hired from the shipping company Seaworks.

Remote controlled installation

“My job is to determine the angle and the ship speed to be used for the installation, meaning I prepare the execution files that are used to deploy the cable at the correct position on the sea bed, as well as the position and speed of the ship along the route,” explained Hopland. “The whole installation is then run automatically by the ship computer. Magnar Greve is on board the ship to help tackle any unforeseen situations.”

Installing the subsea cable is a challenge. There are many factors to consider in advance, such as seabed conditions and topography, the currents and the weight, and other characteristics of the cable itself.

“As many facts as possible have to be included in the computer model, in order decide on the angle and speed for the actual installation of the cable,” said Hopland.

Cost-efficient alternative

Installing and using submarine cables is a relatively cheap and effective alternative when new cables are needed near the coast. The submarine cables have also shown to have less fractures or damages over time.

“Statistically, we have only 0.4 faults per year, usually due to rare underwater landslides. Our subsea cables have survived the stormy weather that caused severe damages to the land-based telecom installations last winter,” says Hopland.

Growing the underwater network

Telenor predicts that over the next three to five years, it may install around 200 – 300 km of cable annually. According to Hopland, Telenor is at the forefront in terms of using large quantities of light submarine cable along difficult routes as a part of the national network.

“What we are doing is quite different from using long submarine cable to connect to other countries and continents. We are installing very small and light cable in complicated subsea terrain, which makes things a bit more challenging,” said Hopland. “But it’s a challenge that we are well-prepared to meet.”

Annita Fjuk, a program director in Telenor’s research division, heads Telenor’s partnership in CSI. She answers a few questions on the new service design initiatives that have stemmed from Telenor’s involvement in the CSI.

Q: What do you mean by “service design”?

Annita: It’s about designing a service; it’s not about the products. Service design is completely different from product design. Many people think of service design as designing an interface on a Web site. That’s part of it, but only one small part of it. The key to the design of services is the attention to how an experience flows across touch-points rather than the quality of the interface alone. Strategic service design is also about creating a vision, fundamentally driven by the customer’s experience.  It’s about how you combine traditional business thinking with more creative thinking.

Q: Why is service design important for Telenor?

Annita: We started to take part in CSI because we are undergoing a change in our industry – from very product and technology focused to more marketing and customer focused. We are also striving to become a more customer-centric company.

In addition, strategic service design is an important instrument in early innovation processes. An important part of service design thinking is visualization and designing experience prototypes that help grasp a potential implementation before resources are spent in development.

Q: What projects have been initiated in the first year of the CSI partnership?

Annita: We have already done a few CSI-projects, and most of them have focused on how we can use service design as an instrument for reducing complexity both for our customers and for our organization. So far, we have worked with Telenor Norway (Customer Care) on how to deliver superior customer experience, reduce costs and increase sales.

Q: How has service design helped Telenor Norway with the challenges they face, such as in the online store?

Annita: We are exploring this along with strategic service designers soon, looking at how we can improve the optimization across manual and digital channels in sales and service. The service designers start with a visual depiction of the intended experience. The service designers are able to provide us with visual concepts of the target experience for customers…to really demonstrate what we are striving to achieve. They also use unique and creative tools to get us to think in different ways.

Q: How do the service designers know what the customers want to experience?

Annita: Telenor has a key resource in the people who work on the frontlines of our business everyday…the people in the stores and the people in customer service. There is a lot of insight that can be gained and we are feeding this information to the service designers. But in other situations, the service designers are doing interviews with customers or map customer journeys as key insight to start with.

Q: What do you hope to achieve in the end?

Annita: First, I think for the service designers, it’s very important for it to be more known that their area of expertise is much broader than interface design. It’s about combining business modeling with creative thinking, and looking at how we can use this creative thinking to evolve into a more competitive, next-generation telecom company. And of course, the underlying ambition for the project is to increase sales, reduce costs and improve the overall customer experience.

Telenor and UiO have enjoyed good working relationships over a number of years as Telenor has supported the University through commissioned research as well as by helping fund doctoral degrees.

Closer collaboration

Building on this, the University and Telenor Group now take their collaboration to a new level.  Through this new agreement both parties will commit themselves to provide necessary resources for mutual learning and development. Research will be done on internet economy and digital music habits.

Internet economy

Internet is often referred to as a global marketplace. The research wants to look closer on how value, power and innovations are actually made and distributed within what might be called the internet economy.

Digital music habits

One of the other projects included in the research programme is Clouds and Concerts at UiO’s Department of Media and Communication. The aim of this project is to provide better understanding of how recent years’ technological shifts have impacted music distribution and the way people listen to music.

Open innovation

“Telenor Group has an open innovation approach, which means that we do research and innovations together with customers, industrial partners and research institutions worldwide to ensure access to cutting-edge knowledge. Our agreement announced yesterday is an example of such open innovation. We certainly look forward to take part in this mutually binding cooperation that we have established with the University of Oslo, Norway’s largest research institution,” said Hilde Tonne, Executive Vice President and Head of Group Industrial Development.

“This agreement is very important. It will lead to competence building both at our University as well as in Telenor Group, and it will enrich both our research and our education as such. Internationalisation is high on our agenda and we are particularly looking for international partners within industry and commerce. In a Norwegian context, Telenor holds a unique position with its large international footprint. It is great to partner with an international player like Telenor Group,” said Ole Petter Ottersen, Rector of the University of Oslo.

The programme is scheduled to run for three years and is funded by Telenor Group with up to NOK 2 million per year, i.e. a total of NOK 6 million. Cooperation has already started and includes research projects at UiO’s Department of Media and Communication, Department of Informatics and Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture (TIC).

Related articles

• “Historical collaboration”: Read article in Computerworld (in Norwegian)

Read more on the University of Oslo’s home page (in Norwegian)

The “Clouds and Concerts” music study

A 14–year-old technology
IPv6 is a network protocol that will replace the current Internet (called IPv4). IPv6 is not new by any means. According to Geir, the standardization work was more or less completed back in 1998. But until recently there has been no urgency to make the change. If anything it hasn’t been considered worth the bother.

“The problem with trying to push IPv6 in the late 1990s/early 2000s was that there was no direct tie to greater revenues or improved customer experience. Then the dot com bubble burst and no one was really interested in spending any money on IPv6,” explains Geir. “Everyone was waiting for the IPv6 “killer application” to be discovered to make the business case.”

So far, nobody has discovered a killer app in order to usher in IPv6 with a bit more fanfare. In fact, most people won’t notice any difference at all once the switch is finally made.

IPv6 is crucial to business continuity
“The reason that IPv6 has crept up on us this time is simply due to business continuity. We will run out of IP addresses to give our customers,” says Geir.  “So really the killer application is the connectivity; the Internet itself. And if we want to continue growing we need to upgrade.”

“The problem for most people when it comes to understanding the switch to a new Internet is that IPv6 isn’t something that you can see or buy in a store.  IPv6 is just a piece of your computer’s operating system that’s going to pack all your bits and bytes in a different format and ship it on the same wires that you use every day,” says Geir.

Telenor is in line with other telecoms
Last year, Telenor Norway issued a statement that by 2013, any customer requiring IPv6 will receive an offer for supporting products. According to Geir, this statement is pretty much in line with what the other telecoms are doing; we are neither in the lead nor lagging behind. Telenor is doing the upgrade in a sensible way, in time with market demand and the modernization of the networks.

The boy who cried wolf is finally right
IPv6 is something that Geir has been thinking about for more than a decade. He says that he sort of feels like “the boy who cried wolf”, only this time the people are listening because IPv6 is the only way the Interne will grow. But what will Geir do once we are living in a fully IPv6 connected world?

“I guess it’s sort of been my baby…but it’s something that’s never really finished. There’s always new stuff, new technology, new ways to communicate. The good thing about IPv6 is that it is flexible technology. It will allow for new services that you can’t even imagine…believe me, if I could I would have my own start-up,” jokes Geir.

One day in the near future, we’ll all be on IPv6 and shared IP addresses will be a thing of the past. It may not be a transition with the same degree of excitement as, say, the switch to digital TV, but it is an essential switch that will enable the inevitable growth of the Internet and allow for more of the world to get connected.

June 6 is World IPv6 Launch Day
“It’s been a long wait, but after June 6 many of the Internet’s major content providers will be permanently available on IPv6,” says Geir. “The next step is about the network access, and Telenor will be there soon.”

For more information, visit the IPV& launch website

We are here to stay

”After 2 February when the Indian court decided to withdraw our licences, we are doing even better than before, attracting more customers and more distributors. We are still taking market shares day by day. I am confident that our strategy is the right and we will continue to pursue this course”, says Sigve Brekke, Executive Vice President and Head of the Telenor Asia operations.  “We are here to stay”.

Watch the CNBC-TV18 feature:

Join the Facebook campaign for Uninor
A Facebook campaign called “We love Uninor” was launched by Uninor employees after the court’s decision to withdraw the licences. This initiative demonstrates their passion and willingness to fight to save the operations in the country. Join the campaign!

“We love Uninor” on Facebook

About CNBC-TV18

CNBC-TV18 is one of India’s leading business news channels. The channel’s benchmark coverage extends from corporate news, financial markets coverage, and expert perspective on investing and management to industry verticals.

Related press releases:

Indian Supreme Court cancelling 2G licences

Telenor Group seeks indemnities from Unitech Limited as it gets ready for a new future in India

“With help of the service, mobile phone users including our 28 million customers will be able to easily verify details of their vote by just one SMS. The service resonates with Telenor Pakistan’s mindset of Karo Mumkin – Make it Possible. As part of this mindset, I am happy to say that we were the first mobile company which, right from the start, showed keenness to work with the government on this project of national importance and made it happen,” said Aamer Izhar, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Security, Telenor Pakistan.

Easy and convenient

All a voter needs to do is to send his or her computerized National identity Card number to a short code provided by the authorities. Within seconds, the voter will subsequently receive an SMS message, confirming his or her registration as well as location (electoral areas) where he or she is registered along with serial number in electoral rolls. Apart from 50,000 physical display centres of preliminary electoral rolls for verification, the service comes as a convenient choice for voters to verify their details without having to go to the display centres. The initiative is expected to increase voting percentage in Pakistan and minimise the possibility of errors in the Final Electoral Rolls.

Over 100 million mobile phone users

The service is made possible due to the growing mobile subscriptions in Pakistan. At year-end 2011, Pakistan became the world’s tenth largest mobile market with around 113 million mobile subscribers. Over 70 % of the population reportedly have regular access to a mobile phone through one means or another.

A leading SMS-generating country

The use of SMS is common in Pakistan across phone owners of all demographics, thanks to low tariffs and affordable handsets. Beginning from interactions among subscribers themselves, SMS is now enabling wide-ranging interactions to take place such as that between mobile phone subscribers and government, businesses, and financial institutions in the form of mobile banking.

“It is not surprising then that Pakistan generated over 175 billion SMS in 2010, making it one of the top five SMS-generating countries of the Asia-Pacific region,” added Aamer.

SMS as communications tool for social work

With more people having access to mobile services, SMS has emerged as one of the most used and cost efficient communications tools for social and humanitarian work as it can reach out to a lot of people especially those in rural areas where fixed line infrastructures are still limited.

“In Pakistan, donations can be sent easily via SMS to help in social work; information can be provided quickly and easily following a disaster about sources of relief goods and safety measures that need to be taken by those affected; employees can be provided timely updates on security and traffic routes,” he said.

“Shared literacy” practices help

Although literacy rates in Pakistan present a barrier, a survey, conducted by LIRNEasia in 2009, found that it is common for illiterate phone users to ask literate relatives and friends to read text messages to them, and sometimes to write text messages for them as well. That phones are very commonly used by multiple individuals makes such “shared literacy” practices a fact of everyday life.

The Indian TV station NDTV Profit, presenting in depth business news, published a 24 minute news program titled: “Uninor on the warpath?” on Saturday and Sunday last weekend. The program shows an energetic and highly motivated Sigve Brekke, Executive Vice President and Head of the Telenor Asia operations. Together with representatives of Uninor employees, referred to as the “winning team”, he shows that Telenor is a long-term telecom operator in India and that the Uninor spirit is even stronger than before.

The “We love Uninor” campaign launched by Uninor employees demonstrate their passion and willingness to fight to save the operations in the country.

“We love Uninor” on Facebook

NDTV stands for New Dehli Television, and it’s among India’s top broadcasters with three national channels, twenty-three offices and studios across the country.

Watch the program at the NDTV website

Click here to see the program

Facts about NFC

NFC is a two-way communication technology based on radio-frequency identification (RFID). The main difference between RFID and NFC is the operating distance, which for NFC is set to approximately 10 centimetres.

NFC services are easy to use and may be efficient in many fields, such as;

• Payment; Instead of paying with cash or a payment card you can just tap the mobile phone with NFC onto a payment terminal to pay.
• Tickets; Mobile phones with NFC can replace traditional paper tickets and contactless cards used in public transportation. Cinemas, theatres, stadiums, concert halls and other arenas are also likely to replace their tickets with NFC tickets.
• Access control; access to offices, homes, hotel rooms, events, cars, PCs, W-LANs and access to other places where one normally would use a key, a card, a PIN-code or a password can be possible using a mobile phone with NFC.
• Information exchange; using a NFC mobile phone you can read NFC-stickers for getting information. The stickers can be placed in price tags, smart posters, on bus stops etc. Pairing two NFC- phones, you can exchange money, business cards, facebook profiles or engage in a gaming session.

Telenor wants to be a part of the NFC ecosystem

Telenor can provide real value in the new ecosystem with regards to its customer base, trusted brand, and technology assets in SIM as the Secure Element and its unique Over The Air (OTA) distribution capabilities. Telenor views SIM based NFC services as the best way to ensure security, standardization, interoperability, interaction, scale and a good end-to-end customer experience.

Telenor is ready to take a multi-operator and a multi-service approach, being highly dependent upon other partners, including competitors. Mass market adoption is the goal, and that is unlikely to happen if there is only one mobile operator or one bank who delivers the NFC services. Clear and well defined business models are important to ensure revenues to all contributing parties.

It will take some time before NFC based services are available to the mass market in Norway. This is due to several reasons; immature business models, few NFC enabled handsets, few NFC enabled POS/turnstile terminals. Telenor will therefore take a step-by-step approach for developing NFC enabled services, starting with the Tap2Pay project.

Tap2Pay – a first move

During the summer of 2011, around 250 of Telenor’s and DnB NOR’s customers tested paying via mobile in Doorstep’s”Tap2Pay pilot”. A dozen locations in Oslo, Norway took part in the test. Tap2Pay was a success, and over 80% of the users were satisfied with the solution.

The Tap2Pay “next step” project will establish real NFC services for consumers and merchants in 2013. The solution will have more functionality than the Tap2Pay pilot and will include payment cards, loyalty cards and tickets. The solution will be scalable and can be further developed as the market matures.

NFC City testing NFC services

NFC City is a user-led innovation project partly funded by The Research Council of Norway over the VERDIKT programme. The project is managed by Telenor and includes eight partners: Telenor, Cominor, DNB, Doorstep, FARA, National Institute for Consumer Research, Troms County Council, and the University of Tromø. The project started in 2010 and will run through mid-2014. A number of NFC services will be developed and tested. Project Manager is Senior Researcher Sigmund Akselsen.

Read more about NFC City here

For more information, please contact

Viktoria Erngard in Telenor Group

E-mail: viktoria.erngaard@telenor.com

Elisabeth Falck in Telenor Norway

E-mail: elisabeth.falck@telenor.com

Related article

Mobile payment becomes a reality in Oslo

Mobile Advertising is getting more and more established as an integral part of the media mix. We expect to see the same development as seen on online ads spent in the future, and some experts say that the total market could reach as much as USD 17,2 billion in 2015. Mobile operators have assets to take a position in this eco system. This was one of the topics in focus during a panel discussion which Kristin Skogen Lund took part in at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Rajiv Bawa, Chief Representative for Telenor in India, participated in a session on “BRICS and the Challenges of Innovation” at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

BRICS is an international political organisation of leading emerging economies, arising out of the inclusion of South Africa into the BRIC group in 2010. As of 2012, its five members are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Over the past 15 years, Telenor Group has become a growth market expert, with vast operations in Asia. While technology was initially transferred to these business units, emerging markets have become exporters of new concepts and innovations.

Rajiv Bawa, Telenor’s Chief Representative in India has been working in the global IT industry on several continents. In the video interview above, he talks about how companies in emerging markets are changing the rules of the mobile business.

In her presentation “Mobile financial services for everyone” Kristin gave a short account of Telenor Group’s efforts within this area, which goes all the way back to 1998. Since then, Telenor has delivered mobile money services in all its markets; Enabling customers in Budapest to pay toll road fees on the mobile, bus tickets in Stockholm, utility bills in Dhaka, to make internet payments in Bangkok and so on.

Addressing some of the challenges experienced during the first wave of mobile money services, Kristin pointed out that every time Telenor, or other players, launched mobile payment services market pick-up was slower than expected.

Not about technology

“Based on this, we believed that the technology was not mature. But this is not about technology. This is about building the market,” she said explaining to her peers how Telenor Group has broken ground by shifting its focus.

“After a few years of mobile business in the early nineties we realized that mobile telephony is for everyone, including ordinary customers in emerging economies. To reach everyone, we therefore developed a method and an attitude, which we have also used in rolling out financial services. With low costs, we reach wide, where people and businesses are,” said Kristin and pointed to Easypaisa in Telenor Pakistan – our flagship mobile money service – as a good example of this.

Our flagship mobile money service

Easypaisa already has the largest financial services network in Pakistan, with more than 16.000 certified agents, compared to the bank’s combined 9.000 branches. Account openings can be carried out in only 5 – 10 minutes. Money is sent immediately to anyone that the customer would like to send money to, not only to those with bank accounts.

Similarly, she also highlighted mobile money services in Sweden where Telenor has joined other telcos in a company called WyWallet, which offers customers a secure and easy eCommerce payment services.

“We have found a way to work with banks and regulators. Banking services will have to be done under banking licenses – in the banking space. We know national financial authorities welcome mobile financial services, as efficient banking made for everyone will grow the national economy and create opportunities for the large groups of people and businesses,” she said with reference to last year’s study commissioned by Telenor Group which indicates that mobile financial services may increase financial inclusion by 5 – 20 per cent by 2020 and lead to up to 5 per cent increase in GDP.

“We find regulators growingly supportive of players outside the regular brick-and-mortar banking industry,” she continued.

Near Field Communication

The proliferation of NFC-enabled handsets, and the deployment of the associated infrastructure is said to be reaching the tipping point which will bring advanced mobile money services to the mass market. In a comment to this, Kristin said that NFC (Near Field Communication) will win ground as a technology if it serves the needs in the market and we – the operators – understand how to win the market.

Last year, Telenor and DnB Nor, Norway’s largest bank, ran a NFC pilot in which 250 or their customers tested the option of paying via mobile. The findings from the trial were solely positive. 80 % reported satisfaction and 97 % said that they would use such services in the future. Test users said they would use mobile payment if it is offered on preferred mobile phones at numerous shops.

“We know how to do this; we know how big we need to think; we know the marketing resources need; we know how to work with the banks. We will create mobile banking for everyone – convenient and efficient,” Skogen Lund concluded.

Related articles:

Easypaisa – banking services made easy

Mobile payment becomes a reality in Oslo

The impact of mobile financial services

Coping with fierce competition and increasing demands for service quality, coupled with regulatory and financial limitations, innovation has become a necessity for mobile operators. In emerging, low-ARPU markets, operators are challenging norms and mindsets to serve a soaring subscriber base.

Adding almost 18 million customers last year with a market offering based on affordable basic services to the mass market, Uninor has taken radical steps to optimize costs.

Discussing network investments in the age of austerity with technology leaders from several continents at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Uninor COO Yogesh Malik shared his perspectives on infrastructure costs and innovation.

Ensuring network operability and reliability is crucial

In company of representatives from Vodafone, Telstra, NTT Docomo, Ericsson and the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Oddvar Hesjedal, Executive Vice President and Head of Group People Development highlighted the most important lessons Telenor Group with its mobile operations in 11 countries have learnt from recent natural disasters.

Hesjedal emphasised the importance of the following three areas: network availability, information access and crisis cooperation, and he made specific references to experiences in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand and Montenegro.

SMS and voice can provide essential information

“In many countries mobile coverage is way better than other lines of communication. A mobile is something people keep with them wherever they go. Thus, through their devices people are – in theory – accessible 24/7. In case of a disaster, timing is of essence. People need to get the right information at the right time and SMS and voice recordings can provide essential info on e.g. where shelters are,” says Hesjedal.

Preparations and contingency plans

He also drove home the importance of network preparedness such as having equipment that withstands disasters in place, as well as routines for crisis management. Which all of the mobile operations in Telenor Group have. Similarly, cooperation with governments to have system in place for bringing information to the public is crucial.

Grameenphone and Disaster Management Bureau (DMB) of Bangladesh entered into an agreement in 2009 that during a disaster like a cyclone, flood or other natural calamity, an early disaster alert will be generated by DMB and disseminated to the people of disaster prone areas using Grameenphone platform and network. This cooperation is now being further developed.

Summing up, Hesjedal concludes that network availability and crisis management are highly prioritised in all Telenor companies. “Information access requires long term relationships with regulators and other authorities and should be developed as part of a crisis-cooperation in each country.” He welcomed the initiative from GSMA in this matter. “The programme will facilitate a meeting place for operators, humanitarian organisations and authorities thus making best practice available to all operators.”

Juan Carlos Lopez, Head of Technology and Products and Elin Heir, Head of Sales and Marketing eHealth in Telenor Objects.

Telenor Objects has since its inception been focusing on building horizontal service enablement functions for a range of M2M (machine-to-machine) application areas. The Shepherd© platform has been developed and released to support the vision: allowing any device to connect to any application.

As a result of changing market dynamics, Telenor Objects will from 2012 focus more strongly on the eHealth and Assisted Living segment. The Shepherd©platform is at the core of the eHealth offerings and will also be used locally by Telenor companies taking M2M eHealth solutions to their respective markets.

“In many countries the number of old and retired people is steadily increasing while the percentage of people in work decreases. This situation represents a big challenge to public health care providers and in Telenor Objects we are actively responding to this challenge by defining our new role mainly as a player in the eHealth segment. From 2012 we will focus our M2M activities and strengthen our position in this segment,” said Juan Carlos Lopez, Head of Technology and Products in Telenor Objects.

The Shepherd© platform allows Telenor companies to work with local application partners who already have close relations to public health care providers.

“We started developing and testing this platform in Norway at an early stage and it is now ready for other markets. The concept has already been well received in Telenor Hungary who is preparing eHealth offerings together with a local partner,” Juan Carlos Lopez said.

Value adding caring services

Caring services is a collective term for a variety of technologies which contribute to a more efficient and demand-controlled care, allowing people to get help when they actually need it, including smart home technology, body sensors, tracking technology, administrative technology, and automated machines.

Telenor Objects eHealth solutions based on the Shepherd platform do not start from scratch but are adding value to existing caring services and customer relations. In Norway, Telenor Objects is collaborating with Visma, the leading supplier of patient journal services for Norwegian municipalities, and Telenor Norway who supports Telenor Objects with its existing sales force.

The successful Norwegian market trial with Visma last year included sensors for measuring blood pressure and oxygen saturation in the blood and for detecting falls and bedwetting. The project showed that care personnel could improve the quality of their services while adding minimal changes in their way of work. By receiving important information electronically, the care personnel could reduce the travelling time between clients and increase the time for those who needed it most.

“After completing the trial with Visma last year, we are now in the midst of preparing a beta phase with minimum four municipalities, starting up this summer. We are talking to different partners and prospects customers, covering most of the Norwegian municipal market. The beta phase will provide further learnings and we expect to have several commercial installations at the end of the year,” said Elin Heir, Head of Sales and Marketing eHealth in Telenor Objects.

Related article:

Elderly people may live at home longer with M2M solutions

Q: There is a consensus among industry observers that we will experience strong growth in mobile connectivity from M2M and embedded mobile applications. Where do you see this growth coming from?
Per: Apart from the increased number of embedded devices, we are predicting the biggest growth in the automotive vertical. This is driven heavily by the eCall initiative, a project intended to bring rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere in the European Union. We also predict substantial growth in the smart metering industry due to many countries starting to mandate the use of energy saving smart grid solutions. Smart meters are an innovative and advanced utility meter that records a business or consumers energy, water or gas usage in real time and in greater detail.

Assets of all shapes and sizes will start to be monitored all over the globe. Today we see high price tagged items such as excavators and construction equipment being monitored, but the trend is spreading towards people and pets too. Up until today much of the embedded connectivity development has been focused on machine-to-machine communications and connected things. But, we must not forget about people. The people that drive the cars, live in the buildings, consume the energy and so on.

Q: Interesting! So what’s your take then on the way that M2M is going to impact people’s lives in the future?
Per: I think that what we are going to discover in the coming months, years and even further out is that a lot more information is going to be pushed at us: information that is related to almost everything we do. In short, connectivity is providing digital power to us as end-users and consumers. Combined with an exploding Smart phone penetration people will have the power to act at their fingertips trough smart and purpose built apps.

For example both our customers Volvo and Nissan Leaf have launched Iphone apps letting the user start the heater, get full control over battery status and steer the charging of the car on remote. Smart energy meters are going to tell us how much energy we are using in real-time and what it costs. Making it easier for people to choose to use energy at non peak-times. And security systems will do more than merely issue a break-in alarm. For example, they will tell us when our kids are at home or not at home.

Another good example is car telematics that provide information on driving behavior to insurance companies. That way the premium young drivers pay can be based on accurate information instead of age. It’s a classical win-win app.

Q: What do you see as the industry’s biggest challenge on the marketing front at the moment?
Peer: Unfortunately there is a general impression that wireless networks are nothing more than bit pipes and that price per Mbyte, not quality of service and the total cost of ownership for that service are the key parameters. We are even working with our competitors to change that mindset in order to ensure that M2M connectivity is not undervalued. It is easy to get carried away with growth predictions and they are staggering, but connectivity services are more complex than many people think and they can be and should be rich and robust. We don’t see price per Mbyte as an issue: around 98 per cent of M2M applications use less than 2Mbyte a month.

From a more inward perspective, Telenor Connexion sees that we must move gradually beyond just offering premium connectivity and business consulting to our customers (with business and life critical M2M applications) and find ways to promote the value of our M2M solutions beyond pure data delivery, as our offering is so much more than that.

Q: Telenor Connexion has enjoyed considerable success in the global M2M space. What is your focus right now?
Per: We have supplied premium M2M solutions, in verticals such as Automatic Meter Reading (AMR), Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), home alarms, fleet management, container management and eHealth. Besides promoting the total value of our solutions, we are maintaining the focus on working closely with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s), device manufacturers, and tier one players that are looking to implement a business or life-critical M2M application. This is why we have customers such as Volvo, Nissan, Renault, Daimler and Scania who are implementing automotive applications, or Securitas Direct, whose solutions generate alarms that have to be delivered immediately. The same criteria apply to telematics and eHealth and of course there are other vertical industries where M2M applications are business critical.

Many times M2M solutions start out locally, but grow into global solutions as they are standardized. This is why it is so important to design a solution for international use from the beginning. We in Telenor Connexion like to help our customers with this type of forward thinking and our experience in multiple verticals allows us to do that.

Q: Do you have any last thoughts you want to share with us?
Per: To sum up, the world of M2M is now fast moving from technology push towards value creation and services – apps inbuilt in devices and smart phones will play an important role here. It also means that the opportunity of embedded connectivity will become more visual and open up for wider acceptance and understanding across individuals, industries and countries. So far, we have only seen the beginning but, no doubt, the predicted growth in M2M is driving a considerable number of companies around the world to scramble to find a way to enter this market and ride the wave of growth. I am confident that Telenor will be part of that wave.

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Commercial launch in March

The trial is to promote usage among its existing mobile internet customers. Walking into any of the 27 stores today, dtac customers can enjoy free high-speed Wi-Fi service through their mobile devices, according to Ketchayong Skowratananont, the chief executive of dtac Broadband Co, dtac’s wholly owned subsidiary.

A commercial Wi-Fi service is scheduled to start on 1 March in Bangkok.

Starts with the malls

When asked why the service is only available in shopping malls, Ketchayong says:

“Like a lot of urban dwellers in Thailand, the most popular hang-out place for mobile broadband users is shopping malls where they can meet, shop, dine and also enjoy surfing the Internet, being over smart phones, tablets or notebooks. So instead of blanketing the whole cities with a lot of hotspots, we decided to focus on providing the service where most of our target customers are.”

High quality at affordable price

Unlike other operators, dtac chose not to over claim its Wi-Fi speed, but rather lets its customers try the service by themselves.

“Our study confirms that Wi-Fi speed and quality currently provided by our competitors are far below their promise. We will not go down that route. Rather, we will compete with a better service and let the customers decide,” says Ketchayong.

What dtac uses as its key differentiators are faster speed and value-for-money offerings.

“Faster and more reliable”

“We are confident that we can satisfy customers with faster and more reliable speed, where we have it. Once the customers are happy, they will tell their friends and that’s when we hope the ‘words-of-mouth’ mechanism will start to kick in,” Ketchayong says.

The company plans to introduce economical packages for its Wi-Fi services, with the charge ranging from merely 20 baht (approx NOK 4) per hour to 99 baht (approx NOK 20) per month for unlimited access.

Goal 300.000 users

“When our service is commercially available, we want to make sure that we have the unbeatable speed and the most value-for-money offering in the market,” Ketchayong adds.

dtac expects to get 300,000 Wi-Fi users by end of this year. “Our initial target is our own existing customers. Later on, with our clear differentiations both in terms of quality and price, we hope to win over some customers from our competitors,” he says.

dtac currently has 6 million data users, out of a total 23.2 million subscribers.

Mobile broadband users to skyrocket

The rapid growth of smart phones and tablet users in Thailand has also been one of the main factors encouraging dtac to provide Wi-Fi, on top of its existing 3G services.

According to global research firm Frost & Sullivan, the number of mobile high-speed broadband users in Thailand will account for half of total mobile users, or reaching 35 million, by 2015 as smartphones and tablets proliferate and the 3G network expands.

Growing sales of smart phones and tablets

Local sales of smart phones and tablets will also likely exceed personal computer sales for the first time this year. Last year, Smart phone sales totaled 9 million units while sales of tablets reached 600,000.

“We see growth potentials here and we are ready to take a fair share in the market. The other main objective is to offload traffic from our 3G network especially in the densely populated locations. This is to make sure that our customers get good connectivity at all times,” Ketchayong says.

Related article:

dtac launches 3G in Thailand

“THOR 7 is making good progress and is now within the design stages before proceeding to construction and testing later this year. Every day counts to ensure the programme remains on schedule,” says Oddveig on the phone from California. Two engineers from TSBc’s Space Systems department have re-located from Fornebu, Norway to the THOR 7 field office based at the headquarters of satellite manufacturer Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, USA.

Increased communication via satellite

In a fast changing communications environment, satellites continue to play an important role in the distribution of digital content. Satellites are first class platforms for bandwidth hungry TV applications including HDTV, 3DTV, mobile TV, pay per view and in the future – Ultra HD (also known as Super hi -Vision), providing the same TV viewing experience in your home as you would experience in an IMAX cinema. Furthermore with growing consumer demands for broadband – satellites have a central position in delivering broadband services, regardless of location, whether on land in remote regions such as the South Pole, at sea or even up in the air.

Telenor Satellite Broadcasting is well positioned to capture this growth and already operates from an established hotspot orbital location, 1°West, reaching over 17 million TV households and offering a stronghold position for maritime services throughout Northern Europe.

“THOR 7 is a significant investment for Telenor and will provide Telenor Satellite Broadcasting with the satellite capacity required to support increasing broadcast and broadband demands for digital services, anywhere and at anytime,” explains Oddveig. “Internet and video traffic is increasing by the day – satellite as part of a hybrid solution allows broadcast and broadband operators to offer consumers easy access to content with the best video quality regardless of the type of device, wherever and whenever. For broadband communications, the need for the same access to digital applications at remote locations at sea or even in the air has marked an increase in the need for satellite technologies,” adds Oddveig.

Realizing her love of space

Over the past few years, TSBc has been involved in two major satellite programmes, both of which have proved commercially successful and have provided necessary satellite capacity for the distribution of broadband and broadcast services throughout Europe. Oddveig was field manager for both the THOR 5 and THOR 6 programmes based respectively in Washington DC, USA and Cannes, France. Her love of space sparked at an early age and she recalls fondly the lasting impression of the historic moon landing – an event that captured her interest and lead to Oddveig studying engineering.

“When I graduated, I looked for a position where I could learn more about space and satellites. The closest I found at the time was working with satellite communication systems, which I really enjoyed. Whilst in this job, I came across an opportunity to work as an intern at the field office of the Intelsat 6 program. That was the start of a career that has and continues to provide me with much motivation and enthusiasm.”

Leading ladies

When it comes to leading women within the satellite team, Oddveig is certainly not alone. Kjersti Hamborgstrøm, Head of our Spectrum management department, is responsible for frequency coordination and satellite capacity management and also holds the position as president of NIFRO (Norwegian Industrial Forum for Space Activities). Among many merits, she also led the team that secured the right frequencies in orbital position 4°West, which allows TSBc to fully exploit the remaining commercial life of Thor III.

“Kjersti has also played a key role in making it possible to use the Ka-band on our new satellite, which means we will be able to provide faster and more cost-efficient broadband through THOR 7,” says Oddveig, visibly proud of her colleague.

Oddveig also works closely with space scientist Lene Marthinsen, who is responsible for the launch and insurance procurements for THOR 7. Lene studied space physics and has been involved in the selection and project management of the previous launch vehicles for THOR 5 and THOR 6.

Countdown

For Oddveig, the most exciting part of the project is the launch campaign.

“The launch campaign is the highlight of the project. This represents the final stage of almost four years of hard work for all parties of the project, and it is truly spectacular to be a part of the launch,” says Oddveig. “I feel incredibly lucky to have been part of the two last satellites launched by TSBc, and I’m looking forward to send this project off to space too!”

Visit Telenor Satellite Broadcasting’s website

Related article

THOR 7 gets the go ahead

Let me give you an example of voice handling: When you call your sister in UK from Norway, we have the machinery and switches to transport the voice traffic from Norway through our sea cables to UK and hand it over to your sister’s operator, let’s say Vodafone UK. And vice versa, when your sister calls you, Vodafone UK preferably hands over that traffic to us. We then pay a termination fee to Telenor Norway for handing over the traffic to you.

Q: TGS is a carrier for signaling services. What does that mean?
Bjørn: It means that we provide the messaging between mobile operators and their end customers. When you arrive at an airport abroad for instance, a foreign operator’s network automatically pops up on your mobile phone which you can utilize through roaming. This is happening because we have provided the signaling from your handset and back to your home operator through our sea cables.

Q: How do you ensure high quality on these global services?
Bjørn: For our services to function well, we have interconnected with 200 operators worldwide with physical cables so that we control the traffic as close to the end customer as possible. We know that this is the best way of handling the traffic.

Q: Who are your customers?
Bjørn: We have about 200 operators as customers, such as Telenor Norway, Vodafone Spain, Vodafone UK and so on. But our customers are also partners, competitors and vendors as well. When we hand over the traffic to Vodafone UK they will be our vendor for delivering services in the UK. In situations where they got traffic to Norway they are our customer. On other occasions, like for instance capturing traffic from other operators, they are our competitors.

Q: TGS seems to be quite an international company.
Bjørn: We have partners in 150 countries spread out all over Europe, Asia, Africa and America. This makes us one of the most international companies in the Telenor Group. And we are growing! We have seven offices around the world and 20 nationalities among our 110 employees.

Q: Are there any geographical areas that you are prioritizing?
Bjørn: We are focusing on Asia and Africa. These continents represent great growth opportunities for telecom operators. Both Asia and Africa are large continents with many mobile operators. We want to interconnect with as many of them as possible and our main ambition is to help our partners to succeed in the market.

During the past years, we have experienced tremendous developments in Africa where we already have many customers. Usually we need to trace down partners, but in Africa we experience that operators are coming to us because they know we are delivering quality services.

Q: Do you have the same approach in all the countries where you do business?
Bjørn: Up until now we have delivered services with high quality and with a higher price in all markets because this is what our customers have wanted. In the future we want to customize services by offering different combinations of prize and quality to deliver exactly what the end customer needs on a larger scale.

Q: TGS is one of the leading companies in your field. How do you explain this?
Bjørn: As I see it, there are three main reasons for this:

1. The success story of the Telenor Group has made the company well known, even in areas where we do not have retail business such as in Africa. Being part of the Group has been an advantage in marketing TGS.
2. Our long experience has also contributed to our success. We have been around for many years and managed to build trust in the market.
3. The culture of the company is also been bearing fruits. As a team we work to benefit our customers and have customer focus in everything we do. Our employees are eager to work and collaborate across departments and countries to help and deliver what the customer wants and needs. We are quite known for this.

Q: Who are your competitors? And are new service providers among them?
Bjørn: There are about 100 competitors who deliver the same kinds of services as us. These are big companies such as Orange, Sprint, Telecom Italia and Telefonica. New service providers such as Skype are often our customers and we don’t see them as competitors. When calling from a PC to a handset the call needs to go through a mobile network, and Skype use quality vendors like TGS for this. Besides, calling from Australia to Norway for a two hours talk you wouldn’t use your mobile phone anyway, so these new services come in addition to traditional voice traffic.

Q: How does TGS stand out from its competitors?
Bjørn: We are incredibly quality focused. Our ambition is to control the traffic from end-to-end or as close to the end customer as possible. We invest quite heavily in infrastructure, enabling us to trace each phone call if necessary. If it fails – we know why.

In addition to having better services than our competitors, we are also more customer friendly. Let me give you an example: Out of 1000 operators listed on GSM, a typical mobile operator only has 300 international roaming agreements. If you send an SMS to a person using an operator that your mobile company does not have an agreement with, the SMS will not go through. However, you’d still have to pay the fee. TGS has established an SMS-hub with connection to 973 operators, so the chance of getting your SMS through is almost three times as big as with another company. If it still doesn’t get through, you would surely not get billed for it.

Q: What are the main challenges for TGS in the future?
Bjørn: We share the same challenges as the industry as such. Prices and margins linked to voice are decreasing, and voice has been the most important revenue driver for us all and for TGS as well. To find a new revenue stream is challenging.

Q: How will you cope with these challenges? What are the future prospects for TGS?
Bjørn: The largest growth of our business will be in Asia and Africa. We will deliver more broadband services not only to mobile operators but also to service providers and fixed operators. We will also be an important partner for companies delivering new services.

In the future, the world of communication will be smaller and our services will be of greater importance for the Telenor Group in delivering quality services that our end customers use in their daily life. Examples could be video downloading, securing good services when using Twitter, Facebook and so on. We could be the instrument to secure these services for the Telenor Group.

Visit the Telenor Global Services homepage

“The demand for mobile phones was much greater than anyone had anticipated and the growth of usage was explosive. In 1984, we had 38,300 NMT subscribers distributed across 281 base stations. In 1988, Norway had the world’s highest density of mobile phones,” says Hans Myhre, former director of the NMT Group.

Where it all began

“The idea of a mobile phone service that was just as easy to use as regular landlines emerged at a Nordic conference for telecommunications at Kabelvåg in the Northern part of Norway as early as 1969. The participants agreed upon a joint, automatic mobile phone system that could be used across all of the Nordic countries,” explains Hans.

And in 1970 the work began. The 450 MHz frequency band was chosen for the new network that was to be established. The frequency had to be available in all of the countries, so it would be possible to call each country directly. Deciding on the functionality was easy. But it took some time to get the technology in place. In 1975, NMT was approved as a technical standard at the Nordic Telecommunications Conference. A trial network was established in Stockholm in 1976. In 1978, the first exchange was available to order, and the next year the first base stations.

“Our philosophy was always to have an open interface and full standardisation. Patents usually only create problems. This meant that the operators were able to collaborate. We had user-friendly terminals, simple pricing models and complete interoperability across the borders. The mobile phones were sold by independent dealers who competed fiercely. And there was also a market for mobile phones. Customers saw a practical solution to their needs. These were the reasons why it became such a success,” Hans points out.

NMT in operation

The new NMT network was launched according to schedule in 1981 in Norway and Sweden. Sweden opened in October, with Norway following in November. Denmark and Finland launched in January and March 1982. Few people know that Saudi Arabia, which had the same system, started using it in August 1981, and was therefore the first country to use the system.

In 1981, eight mobile phone operators had received approval for their terminals and were ready to launch: Simonsen (Norway), Siemens (Norway), AP (Denmark), Storno (Denmark), SRA (Sweden), Salora (Finland), Mitsubishi (Japan) and Motorola (USA).

More growth

During the first phase, coverage was only available in Eastern Norway, but this was expanded to the rest of the country over the next four years. By 1985, the system covered the entire country.

The mobile phone service was initially national, but from September 1982, NMT, as the first mobile phone system in the world, was opened for roaming between the countries using it.

“We quickly realised that we had underestimated the growth. The demand for mobile phones was much greater than anyone had anticipated. In 1984, we had 38,300 NMT subscribers distributed across 281 base stations. In 1985, our capacity problems in Oslo and Akershus were so great that we had to introduce a licence limit, which obviously caused a lot of trouble,” Hans says.

“In 1983, we had already begun to work on a supplementary system using the 900 MHz band, with new technological opportunities. The industry was informed that this system would be launched in 1986. The number of channels would increase from 180 to 2000. Since the range of the 900 band was much shorter, many more base stations were also needed.”

In December 1986 NMT-900 was launched. NMT-450 was launched in Iceland at the same time. At that time, Norway was ranked number three in the world with 81,000 mobile phones, after the USA with 450,000 and Sweden with 100,000. In 1988, Norway had the world’s highest density of mobile phones with 33 mobile phones per 1000 inhabitants. Sweden and Iceland ranked in second place with 24 per 1000.

International system

Even though NMT was a Nordic system by name, several other countries thought that NMT was a smart system, and both the Netherlands and Switzerland started to use it. Later on they joined the roaming agreement and the NMT Group. In 1990, even the Soviet Union chose NMT-450 as its national system before the country was dissolved. All together, NMT-450 was introduced in 30 countries, and just over ten countries started to use NMT-900.

Monster mobiles

Many people have heard stories about the size of mobile phones in the 1980s, and the first NMT phones were big and bulky, weighing in at about 10-15 kg. The lightest mobile phone was the Norwegian phone Simonsen, weighing just 7 kg. The batteries were the main reason for this weight, as the electronics and the radio unit required a lot of energy. But the electronics industry was in rapid development, and in 1986, Mobira (Nokia), Motorola and NEC introduced handheld NMT-900 mobile phones weighing a couple of hundred grams. However, the phones came with a heavy price tag of 30,000 NOK. Around 1990, handheld NMT-450 phones were also introduced, and the price for the terminals dropped heavily towards the late 1980s.Â

From analogue to digital

NMT was an analogue system. In the early 1980s, it was already evident that the future was digital. Digital technology could offer higher capacity than analogue. Conversations could also be encrypted. In 1989, the GSM standard, which consists of a great deal Norwegian technology, was ready. In 1993, GSM became operational, and the rest is history.

“But I have to mention that 1994 was the year when NMT had the highest number of subscriptions, and this was the year after the introduction of GSM. It wasn’t until 1995 that GSM really started to break down the hegemony,” says Hans.

Swansong

On 1 March 2001, after 15 years of operation, NMT-900 was closed down. The frequencies were needed for GSM, which was growing rapidly. But NMT-450 was in operation until 31 December 2004.

“Many were sorry to see the frequency band closed down, as the range of the 450 MHz signals was unique. There were even examples of vessels being able to establish a connection with a location between Norway and Iceland under certain atmospheric conditions.”

Even though NMT-450 had large area coverage, the coverage of today’s 2G is unrivalled. NMT-450 had a maximum of 85 per cent area coverage and 98 per cent population coverage. Today 2G covers 99.5 per cent of the population. Most of the base stations also offer 3G and are prepared for 4G.

“However, when we talk about 2G, 3G and 4G today, do remember that NMT was 1G: the first generation of mobile telephony that laid the foundations for the industrial revolution we are all a part of. Our NMT experience is priceless and has strongly contributed to the success of GSM,” says Hans Myhre.

“We are very grateful, not only for our own sake but for all the violence-exposed children who now get a new opportunity to speak out and get help. It has always been important for the Stine Sofie Foundation to think innovatively about ways to prevent and detect violence against children, and Telenor now makes this possible through its Christmas gift for 2011,” says Ada Sofie Austegard, President of the Stine Sofie Foundation.

A lot of good applications

Telenor’s Christmas fund is a joint initiative for Telenor’s Norwegian companies to make charitable donations at Christmas time. All the participating companies have contributed with NOK 250 per employee, and the amount for the 2011 is NOK 1.6 million. The Christmas present is going to a Norwegian and an international purpose every other year. There were 17 applications to the Telenor Christmas Fund. The applications had to meet several criteria to be a candidate to receive support from Telenor, including being relevant in relation to communication technology and Telenor corporate responsibility.

“There is always a struggle to find funding for new projects and we could not have established this project without the Christmas gift from Telenor. You are helping us in this important initiative that will really make a difference and help many children in Norway,” Austegard says.

Dare to speak up!

“I want to know” is an interactive tool where children can learn about violence and sexual abuse, and adults can learn how to talk to children about this subject. The main goal with the tool is that more people will dare to speak up about violence and sexual abuse – both the children themselves, and adults who have heard of the assault. “I want to know” will be a webpage with instructing videos and information about different subjects associated to violence and sexual abuse. The website will have different entrances for adults and children, and will be adjusted to the children’s age. The Stine Sofie Foundation wants the e-learning tool to a be part of children’s tuition at school.

“The Stine Sofie Foundation has worked for children’s safety for years. They have bravely defied taboos and highlighted the fact that children are exposed to violence and sexual assault in their daily lives. We hope that the new e-learning tool will contribute to help even more children,” said Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Telenor President and CEO.

Owing to the “Povezivanje” project, work of Roma health care mediators, education of Roma families in Serbia and support in achieving their rights in the area of health care and health insurance have been improved.

“The VIRTUS Award has a special value for us, since it reflects our efforts in initiating positive change in our environment through long-term partner cooperation, knowledge and resources. The cooperation with the Ministry of Health and UNICEF has resulted in combining experience and know-how with telecommunications technologies, contributing to the improvement of the position of socially vulnerable groups. The Povezivanje project has provided clear, measurable and valuable results of the cooperation between the state, non-governmental and business sector,” says Sandra Štajner, Chief Communications Officer of Telenor, upon receiving the Award.

The VIRTUS Award contest has been organized for the fifth consecutive year by the Balkan Community Initiatives Fund (BCIF), with financial support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and in partnership with the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC). In addition to the Award received by Telenor, the VIRTUS Award has been granted in five more categories: for contribution at the national level, for small and medium size enterprises, for contribution to the local community, for support to the most innovative project, and for volunteering. Beside Telenor, this year’s winners are Erste Bank, Holcim, Sunce Marinković and Radio Broadcasting Company B92.

This is the second VIRTUS Award that Telenor has received for its CR activities. The first one was granted to Telenor in the category of special contribution at the national level in 2008.

“Telenor is committed to providing the best customer experience. Therefore, we wanted to develop the best quality and fastest mobile Internet network possible. I am proud that we could deliver the project ahead of schedule and take Hipernet to all settlements with a 3G network before Christmas. The past few months saw some 200,000 new subscribers joining Telenor’s mobile Internet network and now every second Telenor customer buys a smartphone – this is the best feedback we can get,” said Christopher Laska, CEO of Telenor Hungary.

Close correlation between the adoption of mobile Internet and GDP growth

In his presentation, Laska stressed that mobile Internet is about economic growth and better life quality. He said there is a close correlation between the adoption of mobile Internet and GDP growth which is confirmed also by independent research results.

“Making Hipernet available all over the country is a great step on the road to increasing Internet penetration and bridging the digital divide for underdeveloped regions. I am confident that these results will also improve Hungary’s competitiveness in the long run. Besides this, since 2005, our company has contributed to Hungary’s growth with investment projects worth HUF 127.9 bn, taxes of HUF 66.7 bn2 and frequency fees of HUF 31.1 bn,” said Christopher Laska, CEO of Telenor Hungary.

Telenor Hungary’s network modernization programme

In Hungary the number of mobile Internet subscriptions has been on the rise and is close to 2 million. Smartphones have also been adopted at a very fast pace. Currently, nearly 1 million Hungarians use a smartphone. In order to satisfy the growing demand for mobile internet Telenor Hungary introduced its network modernization project in January 2011.

Under its network modernization programme, Telenor has swapped 2,100 base stations and installed 200 new base stations since January 2011. The Hipernet service is now available in 672 settlements across Hungary. In settlements covered by the 3G network, customers can use mobile Internet with a theoretical peak download speed of 42 Mbps. In addition, Telenor has made 53 of its 2G base stations capable of providing Hipernet services to increase the availability of faster data transmission better aligned to today’s needs.

“Based on official statistics, the data traffic generated by Telenor customers increased 1.5 times in the past few months and Telenor customers traffic by far the largest amount of data on their mobile devices. Our network can now support these needs in excellent quality as the network modernization programme increased base stations’ capacity. As a result, we provide customers with higher quality and more reliable service. In the months to come, we will focus on fine-tuning the network and adding new base stations to improve indoor coverage and connect more areas to the 3G network,” said József Huszlicska, Chief Technology Officer of Telenor Hungary.

“The number of companies offering such solutions is about the same as last year, but we are seeing that employees are getting access to an increasing number of tools. It is mainly mobile e-mail and mobile broadband that is increasing,” says Abraham Foss, Head of Business Markets at Telenor Norway.

Of those who facilitate work away from the office, 77 % say that their employees have access to e-mail via mobile phone. This figure was 68 % a year ago. Mobile broadband has seen an increase from 65 to 71 %. Mobile switchboard is also gaining popularity with an increase from 28 to 33 %.

At work?

“This trend makes us less reliant on time and geography. Be it the cafe, tram or bus, you see a great many people tapping away at their phones and tablet computers. A growing number of them are working,” says Foss.

According to the survey, it is the major companies that are leading the way.

“Having divisions at various locations means that interaction has to be effective. Technological facilitation is just as important for small companies too, such as having access to the company’s internal network for the day you have to stay home with your sick child,” says the Head of Business Markets.

77 % of those who facilitate remote offices say that the company provides VPN access.

Online generation

It will become more commonplace to work from places other than the fixed office,” says the head of Microsoft Norway Hege Skryseth.

“This is a trend we are seeing in a number of countries. Rush hour traffic in the major cities is an important motivating factor. The same applies to the need for interaction between companies. Sub-contractors and big companies are often working in different time zones,” says Skryseth.

A company of Microsoft’s size has operating hours outside the Norwegian business hours of 08 – 16.

Microsoft recently published a survey that indicates that eight of ten people consider flexible working conditions an important factor when applying for a job. Four of ten say that it would feature in the decision on whether or not to accept a job offer.

“If we are to be perceived as an attractive employer to the young talent out there, management has to understand that we are dealing with a high-tech generation who are used to having all the information and contacts at their fingertips,” Skryseth says.

“The online generation also expects a certain level of freedom to choose when and where they will work. Not all companies are mentally and technologically prepared for this right now.”

New costs

About a third of the business leaders who are facilitating this, state that employees have the possibility to connect to video conferencing.

“Norwegian employees want to see more solutions that integrate the telephone, video conferencing, chat and screen-sharing in unified solutions. Almost all of business is thinking about how they can best harmonise communication. The benefits are efficient work processes, major savings in terms of both time and money, and not least, flexibility for the employees,” says Abraham Foss of Telenor Norway.

Not surprisingly, Telenor takes a major lead in this advancement. 31,000 Telenor employees have their own profile on the Microsoft client, Lync. With just a few keystrokes on your PC you can call a colleague who is free to decide whether or not they want to take the call on the PC or by telephone.

“Another benefit is that you gain a good overview of who is available and who is busy. This makes clarifying things faster. Colleagues are just a keystroke away, for calls, video conferencing, attending meetings and sharing documents,” says Foss.

Companies that facilitate work outside the office offer employees these data and communication solutions:

Mobile phone: 95 % (93 % last year)

Notebooks: 94 % (93 % last year)

Access to company’s network from home, VPN: 77 % (76 % last year)

E-mail on mobile phone: 77 % (68 % last year)

Wireless broadband: 77 % (73 % last year)

Broadband at home: 76 % (74 % last year)

Mobile broadband: 71 % (65 % last year)

Mobilt Sentralbord: 33 % (28 % last year)

Solutions to virtually attend meetings/video conferencing: 30 % (not measured last year)