Telenor picks Malaysia for Asia Pacific Research & Innovation Centre

Press release
Fornebu
3 minute read
Global telecommunications leader Telenor today named Malaysia as the location for the Telenor Research & Innovation Centre Asia Pacific.


The RM45 million R&I Centre in Cyberjaya will be Telenor's first outside Norway.

In a statement here, Telenor President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jon Fredrik Baksaas, said: "The Cyberjaya centre will strengthen Telenor's competitive advantage by providing all of its 12 mobile network operators with insights into the latest Asian consumer trends and service innovations."

The Cyberjaya centre will work seamlessly with the centre in Norway to serve as a two-way window. It will be Telenor's R & D window to Asia and the Asian companies window to global knowledge and experience.

Mr Baksaas said: "We are leveraging on our Asian resources to accelerate global service innovation."

The Centre will leverage on Malaysian and Asian technology and will collaborate with local and regional partners in developing innovative services and concepts that will be distributed to Telenor's growing mobile operations worldwide.

On the selection of Malaysia, Mr Baksaas said: "It was a challenging call as there were other good locations. We are impressed with Malaysia's excellent infrastructure, advanced mobile market and thriving local content and applications industry."

He added: "We are equally impressed with DiGi's performance and to us this epitomises Malaysia's potential as the global hub for communications and multimedia."

The centre is scheduled to start operations on March 1, 2006. It will be staffed with senior researchers from Malaysia, Norway and the Asian region and will include members of Telenor's Asian mobile operations DiGi, DTAC (Thailand), GrameenPhone (Bangladesh) and Telenor Pakistan.

Dr. Kristin Braa will head the centre. She will report to the CEO of Telenor's R&D Centre in Norway Mr. Hans Christian Haugli.

Contact:

Esben Tuman Johnsen, Vice President Corporate Communications
Telenor, tel. +47 905 08 400

Hans-Christian Haugli, CEO Telenor R&D
tel.: +47 993 50 010