A: Tom Christian Gotschalksen on Services

Q&A: Tom Christian Gotschalksen on Services

Services were a hot topic for Telenor at Mobile World Congress 2011, with presentations on financial services, mobile health and M2M. To learn more about what Telenor is doing, Head of Services Tom Christian Gotschalksen answers a few questions.

Q: What does "Services" mean within the Telenor Group? Tom Christian: Services is a unit that was started in Telenor Group in 2009. Our industry has undergone a change over the past few years. We were once a company that took a raw product, such as voice calls and SMS, and priced and distributed it. Now we are meeting increased competition from players who are adding new functionality to this once basic product. Take a look at Google Voice, for instance, which now offers the capability to transcribe voicemails into text messages. In order to compete with the new players offering new functionality, we need a dedicated Services team in Telenor. Q: Are services more than just the applications on a mobile phone? Tom Christian: Applications are just one way of distributing a service. "Services" is really a bridge between what's offered by the Marketers (the pricing, distribution and promotion) and enabled by the Technologies (the capabilities in the network and IS infrastructure). We connect the Market unit's dedication to customer needs with the Technology unit's dedication to capabilities, and create products and features that serve our market segments. Q: What are some of the things that Services is doing today? Tom Christian: Besides creating more efficient and compelling voice and Internet products, we also drive the Service Retailing Program (the sales and distribution of third party content and application through Telenor digital real estate); we head Telenor partnership activities across the Group for our top 10 accounts; we are looking into wholesale roaming opportunities to support the Markets department in their search for customer-friendly roaming products; we help set the direction and research of our machine-to-machine (M2M) projects; we actively participate in GSM Association's initiatives; and we are currently exploring opportunities in Financial Services such as "banking the unbanked" and "international remittance".Â Q: Can you give a specific example of how Telenor Group's Services team works with Telenor's business units around the world? Tom Christian: Yes, one example is our partnership with Opera Software. All of our business units were exploring different mobile Web browser opportunities, so we decided to do this on a Group level. We started investigating opportunities in the market and decided to enter into a pilot project with browser maker Opera Software. Rather than going the traditional route, we wanted to have an actual use case to present to the business units, helping them understand what we could achieve and how different partners could help us achieve that through a real-life example. We set up the pilot in Pakistan, testing the Opera Mini Web browser on Telenor Pakistan customers, and met great success. Opera Mini has already been implemented by Telenor Serbia and Telenor Montenegro, following this pilot project, as a part of their "Klik" Internet offerings. Novarra, another mobile Web browsing maker, was also awarded a frame agreement and currently several of Telenor's business units are implementing either Novarra or Opera. Q: How did the business units operate before Services was established on a Group level? Tom Christian: The business units were all actively working in the services area, but they were doing this under the radar, with a lot of different vendors, and not fully utilizing our Group scale. Our ambition was to have more impact by operating on a Group level. If you look at the players who are successful today, almost all have global scale or at least regional scale. We believe that by using our scale to our advantage, we can achieve lower costs and attract more partners. The big challenge as I see it is to successfully utilize our scale without hindering local innovation and creativity.

Telenor Group is one of the world's major mobile operators. We keep our customers connected in our markets across Scandinavia and Asia. Our more than 30,000 employees are committed to responsible business conduct and being our customers' favourite partner in digital life. Connecting the world has been Telenor's domain for more than 160 years, and we are driven by a singular vision: to empower societies. Q: Who are we competing against in the Services arena? Tom Christian: We have traditionally competed against other operators, and we are to some extent still competing with them by making customer products and services that stand out in the market. However, in order to be competitive, we are increasingly seeing that we need to serve more customers than our own, particularly when it comes to content, applications and partnerships. If you want to make a compelling offer, Telenor needs to look beyond its access customers in order to achieve scale and attract partners. The Telecom industry has a lot to learn from the Internet companies' abilities to serve customers on a global scale, and I believe that more active participation in the GSMA and WAC (Wholesale Application Community) may fast track some of that learning across operators in the near future. Q: Does an operator like Telenor need to have Services to survive? Tom Christian: Of course we could have a perfectly good and profitable business by simply serving as a bitpipe. However, I don't believe that this is possible for Telenor as it's a complete change from who we are. If you're to become a bitpipe, you don't need the service layer; you don't need the distribution, go to market, the brand, etc. You're simply a business-to-business operator, much like a utility company. I believe that one of Telenor's strengths is our ability to serve and interface with customers in local contexts, providing them which products and services that meet their actual needs. This is where I believe we will the competitive advantage over the Facebooks and Googles of the world.