Telenor brings 'northern model' to telecom industry

Telenor, Norway's flagship telecommunications group, has become an international success in the mobile sector through developing markets early and sharing its technology and transparent "northern model" business style with other telecom companies in emerging markets.

Telenor has majority shareholdings in mobile operations in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as significant minority interests in an international mobile operation in Russia.

Trond Westlie, executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Telenor, details the company's transition and its successful strategy in emerging markets.

Q: How did Telenor become such a strong international player in the mobile sector?

A: The total story of Telenor is that the company decided, back in the early 1990s, that the mobile sector with global system for mobile communication (GSM) was the way to go.

As a result, we have developed an international strategy to participate when the licenses came out early on.

After buying into all of those licenses we realized that the licenses are not enough. We need industrial play. So we converted it to a strategy of "up or out", meaning that we needed to expand into the controlling positions or get out of the licenses to develop the industrial platform going forward.

The success of the strategy has really been to create the Telenor you see today with more than 143 million mobile subscriptions in the companies we have ownership in.

Q: What are some of the assets Telenor can bring to the companies you partner with and invest in?

A: We bring the basic knowledge that we have of rolling out services as an advanced mobile operator, along with the technical skills and organizational setup.

The DNA we have in the culture of Telenor is somewhat different compared to other major worldwide players because we have, in a very Norwegian way, a very decentralized decision-making process when it comes to the local management so that they have more autonomy to take action regarding their own local markets and environment.

All our operations have their own decision-making power when it comes to marketing, prices and set-up relative to distribution platforms.

We don't try to have or push a "one-size-fits-all" product to the local markets. We have to be adaptable to be more competitive.

Q: Can you tell us about a recent success that you are most proud of?

A: We have established Telenor as a company with good governance both centrally as well as in all the countries we work in.

A proud achievement was our ranking last year in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, which measures a company's actions in business environment relations and how well it implements codes of conduct and management systems in all its.

We have been in the top ranking for the past five or six years and last year we were ranked No 1 among all of the world's telecommunications companies.

Q: Do you have any future plans for the China market?

A: We are always open for new opportunities. There is currently very little chance to enter the market there for a company like Telenor, as the telecom industry is of course a regulated business with limited licenses. If there's an opportunity in the future for us to access China, we'll take a look at it.

www.telenor.com

(China Daily 04/14/2008 page30)