Telenor Expands Network Capacity to Enter into Digital Life

Telenor will be celebrating two important anniversaries in 2016―ten years of operations in Serbia, and 20 years in Montenegro. With broadband internet, Telenor currently covers over 92% of the Serbian population and over 97% in Montenegro, and the company is constantly working on upgrading its capacities to provide premium services to its customers. Recently, ZTE Technologies interviewed Ingeborg Øfsthus, CEO of Telenor Montenegro and Serbia. She talked about the characteristics of the Serbian and Montenegrin telecom markets, network capacity expansion project, and the major challenges of this project. She also talked about Telenor's growth strategy and her expectations for ZTE as well as her views on future trends.

How would you characterize the Serbian and Montenegrin telecom markets and their users' habits?

There are similarities between the two markets, due to the geographical and cultural ties, but each market also has its specifics. Both are very competitive markets with customers that have the same expectations as tech advanced users anywhere else in Europe. And they are really starting to get into data services with their demands growing dramatically. This is a trend we are also witnessing in the rest of the world.
 What is specific to Montenegro is that there is still quite high proportion of prepaid customers compared to Serbia, and it is a very seasonal market. We see much more seasonal variations in Montenegro, while in Serbia, there are less fluctuations over the year. Montenegro is a very popular tourist destination, and during the third quarter of every year, the coastline just explodes with tourists. And during those summer months, it can be a challenge to serve all the visitors in a great way, while maintaining the same service level for existing customers. In addition, we see that the population of  Montenegro has tendency to move from inland to the coast areas, which creates additional pressure to capacities.

What distinguishes Telenor from other operators in Serbia and Montenegro?

We have a strong and positive brand perception in both markets with the network as our differentiator, as we are seen as a network quality provider.
In addition to that, we have the advantage of being part of the Telenor group, so we have the opportunity to use the experience from other markets and learn from each other. 4G was introduced in Montenegro relatively early, so we were one of the innovators in this technology in Telenor Group, but still there are some valuable experiences we could draw from the Telenor group in that area.

Could you brief us on your network capacity expansion in Montenegro? How will this project improve user experience?

We see a huge data growth year over year, and need to take Montenegro seasonality into account. We need to prepare for the summer during the first half of the year. That means we have to work on the projects at very strict time lines in order to deliver services in time.
There are two ways we are preparing for the summer season. We are now improving our core network by upgrading it, and additionally, we are moving the core network physically into the new technical premises that are built in Montenegro―our state of the art data center.
Furthermore, we are carefully taking our learnings from the previous summer and forecast for the year to come. Based on that, we are creating a network capacity upgrade plan that needs to be carried out before the end of June.

What are the major challenges that you are facing during project execution?

Time is of the essence. First, we need to ensure that everything, including the equipment, is delivered on time. Second, we need to ensure all the works are carried out exactly where they should be, because we have a short window to perform. I believe this is our key challenge. In addition, we need to ensure that we have all the permits in place, for there is a lot of administrative paperwork when it comes to building new sites.
Of course, the most important thing is to have the right people at the right place and ensure that we have experts available for the whole duration of the project.

How would you describe Telenor's growth strategy? What are your goals in 2016?

We see Telenor's growth strategy built around the three pillars across the Telenor Group―Internet for All, Loved by Customers, and Efficient Operations.
We believe that bringing data connectivity to everybody can influence the quality of life, making it better. Once you enter the digital world, you become a global citizen. There is entertainment on one side, but you also get access to information, which is a way for taking away the boundaries. We truly believe that bringing people into the digital life on one side, creates a better life and on the other, it is creating growth.
The second pillar of our strategy is that in everything we do, we need to focus on being loved by customers. Those are very strong words, but what it really means is we need to understand our customers. We use customer insight, measurements such as Net Promoter Score, to understand what we can help the customers with, and how they perceive us. In Serbia, for example, we are extremely strong when it comes to net promoter score, and in Montenegro, we have an enormous improvement. We also see that the network is the number one reason that promotes us in Montenegro. We believe that putting customers in the center of whatever we do is driving the right priorities and the necessary growth.
And finally, in order to grow, we have to ensure that we are growing in a sustainable and efficient way. We need to be sure that our operation is working as efficiently as possible. What we have done in the region is setting up Telenor Common Operation, a common entity that is now executing planning, rollout, and operations on behalf of all the countries in this region. This is creating scale, and makes it easier for us to grow.

There is a strategy, but would you also say that innovation is a way to grow?

I believe that we need to work on innovation. Innovation can happen on many levels―both big steps, as well as small, constant changes in the way we do our day to day business. It means never settling with the current situation, but always searching for new and better ways to serve our customers.
What we are seeing now is that everything is going digital. As a telco, we need to transform ourselves and embrace the digital future. This means paying a lot of attention to how we interact with our customers and what solutions we deploy. We also need to be bold and think what steps we should take in order to be ready for the future.

How would you assess ZTE's team and solutions? What do you expect from future cooperation with ZTE?

I believe that Telenor Montenegro has quite special relationship with ZTE. It was the first entry point into the Telenor group. ZTE did massive effort in swapping the whole Montenegro network, bringing in a service platform and even converging the billing system. I think that was a big opportunity for ZTE to fully showcase its capabilities in the Telenor group.
We have been working together for many years in Montenegro. We see that the network is performing well, and we are the first in Telenor group to have converged billing in place.
We believe that ZTE's solutions are strong, and we have very good experience of working with the colleagues from ZTE. And we would like to see even closer cooperation, because even though Montenegro is a small market, the activity levels are varying and we have certain fluctuations of the people working with us. We would like to see even more continuity, but we are very impressed with the efforts and dedication of ZTE colleagues in our corporation.
It is very important to have people on the ground and working there. Being a big company, they also have to have strong support and the right prioritization from the central team. I believe that it is important to see this passion to deliver, and a certain flexibility to adapt to local conditions is also appreciated.

What do you think of the future trends in the global telecom market?

Well, there are many big thinkers around this subject, and we can see certain trends.
The first one is that we are going for customer insight by using big data. The information available about customers is huge and requires completely different ways of looking at it. But by utilizing big data, we will get enormous opportunities to provide better services for customers in the future.
Then, everything is moving to the cloud. It is very clear that we need to challenge a decade old way of thinking of having one system as one solution in one country. We now have enormous opportunities―with good cloud solutions, we can utilize resources all over the world.
Thirdly, network revolution, driven by data and triggered by the Internet of Things. We hear about the staggering numbers of connected devices―one billion by 2020, 1.5 billion by 2023. Who knows exactly? But we can see now that it will be an enormous number. This is driving a massive need for capacity, and it will be the driver for 5G technology.
In terms of technologies such as 4G, 5G, the evolution we see that comes from bringing up the capacity, bringing up the number of simultaneous connections and bringing down the latency, just needs to continue. So, no matter what the technology is called, it is first of all the capacity that is driving the change. I believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Internet of Things.
If we talk again in five years, we will surely have a better view on how big it became. And it will be big, that is for sure.