Telenor – Building a new telecom-tech company in Thailand for growth 2.0
During a briefing with media in Thailand, Sigve Brekke, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Telenor Group and Jorgen Rostrup, EVP and Head of Telenor Asia, Telenor Group talked about Telenor’s ambition to build great telecom-tech companies in Thailand and Asia. The roundtable discussion happened one day after Telenor and Axiata received regulatory clearance in Malaysia to move on to the next steps with the Celcom-Digi merger in that market. When Telenor enter the Thai market 20 years ago, the company’s vision was that every Thai deserves a mobile phone and should be able to afford it. Telenor launched market-changing initiatives such as per-second billing and new marketing and distribution models to bring affordability to the masses. Today, Thailand’s mobile phone penetration is 86% with 98.5 million mobile connections. That was what Sigve Brekke called Telenor’s growth 1.0 in Thailand. For the next 20 years, Telenor’s growth in Thailand will look very different. Sigve Brekke said that the telecommunications industry is facing a perfect storm with new technologies – artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and 5G - coming together. It will no longer be about connecting people together but connecting machines and physical objects to the Internet. There will…