Telenor
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Telenor is the largest telecommunications operator in Norway. The headquarter is located at Fornebu, close to Oslo. It has operations in over 12 other countries.
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History
Telenor was formerly state-operated monopoly, and called Televerket that has been in operation since 1855. In 1994, the then Norwegian Telecom was established as a public corporation. In December 2000, the company was partly privatised and listed on the stock exchange. This happaned as a result of the 1998 telecom deregulation in Norway, in which several local (PowerTech, ..) and foreign (Telia, Tele2, WorldCom, ..) companies established themselves as new entrants in the Norwegian telecommunications markets, initially providing carrier pre-selection ("prefix")-based services.
Telenor is also the largest Internet Service Provider in Norway. However, during 1999, the company for the first time experienced major competition in the dial-up services arena when Start Networks and Sense Communications started offering free dial-up Internet access. These competitors combined hold more than a million registered users, a large part of the Norwegian dial-up market.
Telenor was forced to provide local loop unbundling in 2000, and subsequently providers of DSL services such as Catch Communications, NextGenTel and PowerTech flourished, in addition to Telenor itself. There is good geographic coverage for DSL, and prices are relatively low, so DSL has become the major access vehicle for Norwegian Internet users lately, to some extent replacing dial-up access.
Surprisingly, very few competitive operators have started offering basic access (POTS, ISDN BRI) services in the Norwegian market, so Telenor still has a de facto monopoly in this market segment.
In February 2004, Telenor took control of a major Danish mobile telephone operator, Sonofon.
In additon to being Norway's largest internet service provider and telephone operator, it's also Norway's largest mobile operator, with over 2 million customers in Norway. Telenor Mobile has also many abroad operations owning and partly owning mobile operators in, among others: Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Hungary and many more.
Telenor R&D is Norway's largest research establishment within ICT.
Internationalisation
In the second half of the 1990s, Telenor became involved in mobile operations in a number of countries: Russia (1994), Bangladesh, Greece, Ireland, Germany and Austria (1997), Ukraine (1998), Malaysia (1999), Denmark and Thailand (2000). Telenor’s strategy was to take positions based on the company’s core expertise. In 1997, Telenor’s international investments exceeded investments made in the domestic market – mainly as a result of the mobile commitments.
Telenor holds a prominent position in the Nordic TV market, both with regard to the number of subscribers and to the extent of coverage. At the end of 2002, Telenor distributed TV to 2.4 million Nordic customers through Canal Digital and Telenor’s cable operations (Telenor Avidi). The TV activities widen the scope of Telenor’s Norwegian and Nordic operations, primarily by supplying new products and services, but also by providing access to an extensive customer base.
Interesting Tidbits
The Opera web browser was created in 1994 by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy during their tenure at Telenor. Opera Software was established in 1995 after the pair went on to continue development of their browser.
External links
- Telenor (http://www.telenor.com/)
- Opera Software (http://www.opera.com)