LIVE FROM FUTURENET ASIA 2023: Telenor urged the telecoms industry to fully tap into data to become true technology companies in a bid to capture new opportunities in their pursuit of growth.
Eugene Teh Yee (pictured middle, right), Telenor Asia's Head of Business and Partnerships SVP, said the operator is pivoting away from selling connectivity to becoming a solutions provider, marking a significant diversion from the bread and butter of gaining new subscribers for revenue growth.
However, Yee conceded the company is not yet a full solutions provider, as it is unable to pass a key litmus test - putting a new product into the market as a solutions provider.
“If we can proposition a product around data and insights, I think that that will deliver new opportunity for the industry as a whole,” said Yee.
To do this, Yee said that operators must combine their data with a client - for example, a retail company - and that by collating their data “there will be a slew of interesting use cases” that can be monetised. He warned that this must be conducted without violating “privacy principles”.
Yee highlighted that there is no single business model for operators to pivot to, and they must expand their repertoire from pure connectivity, which can be done through hiring new talent.
Highlighting an exmaple of this, Yee pointed to Telenor Group hiring Amol Phadke, a former Google executive, as its new group CTO.
“He doesn’t have the traditional profile of a [telecoms] CTO where they’re usually a network expert, but he came from Google with an AI proposition."
“The intent there is to basically put new people into the organisation, so that we spend a lot more time thinking about how we package and how we bring to market new products or new propositions again,” said Yee.
In conclusion, Yee said: “We’re all on this journey to move Telenor from connectivity being the main services that we sell, to data and insights as the product that we sell on the market. Part of the strategy is about putting the right people and stopping from it.”
