Telenor: Transforming for Development

SUMMARY Telenor Group's ambition is to be a leading global mobile operator. To achieve this, Telenor is building new networks based on an advanced platform to enhance its transnational operation in recent several years.

PROGRESSING ON DEVELOPING ROAD Telenor (Norway Telecom) is the world's seventh largest mobile operator, and one of the most important multinational operators. Its headquarters is located in Oslo, Norway, with a long history over 150 years. Telenor owns 12 subsidiaries and branches located in Northern Europe, Middle Each Europe and Pacific Asia. It mainly operates mobile communication with over 120 million mobile subscribers. Telenor Group's ambition is to be a leading global mobile operator, while delivering attractive returns to their shareholders. To achieve this, Telenor is enhancing the operation of each subsidiary, which is considered as its important strategic measure. Telenor aims to improve operation performance and promote its development by continuously introducing advanced network and service as well as ceaselessly updating technology.

Strong Revenue Growth of Telenor (Source: http://www.telenor.com/en)

IMPERATIVE NETWORK TRANSFORMATION As an experienced operator, Telenor Group always pays great attention to modernize its network. It adopts a new advanced platform of high integration to 2

handle GSM, HSDPA and LTE, so as to provide more flexible services in future. In recent years, such large scale network upgrading is being implemented in many branches of Telenor. In the meantime, a key problem appears during the upgrading – to ensure the stable operation of services becomes the important criterion for evaluating equipment vendor’s capability. Telenor requires that the vendor have rich construction experience, at the same time, must be able to accommodate to and response the swapping network requirements.

TELENOR HUNGARY Telenor Hungary is the second largest mobile operator in Hungary. It focuses on enhancing its leading position in local mobile market by providing highly qualified mobile broadband service. In 2011 Q2, the mobile users of Telenor Hungary exceeded 3.5 million. The original 2G and 3G network platforms of Telenor Hungary are too old to perform multi-network convergence or evolve to LTE. A bottleneck happens to the sustainable network development. According to Telenor’s overall strategy for network upgrading, after a strict evaluation, Telenor Hungary finished the network swap bidding in August, 2010, and introduced ZTE as the new vendor to swap its legacy GSM/UMTS core network equipment. Swap project is closely related with the stability of network, which should be implemented very carefully. With its own professionalism, Telenor Hungary has a set of strict project management procedures, which requires vendor cooperating and responding efficiently. For example, during the network migration, there were many customized development items requiring the vendor to accommodate to the legacy network. To ensure implementing the customized requirements correctly and efficiently, both parties of the project followed a set of complete systemized development and delivery procedure, which includes Requirement specified, Under design, Design reviewed, Under development, Development reviewed, Installed and integrated, Under testing, Test completed successfully, and Delivered. The two parties worked together closely and delivered the project perfectly.

TELENOR MONTENEGRO Telenor Montenegro is the biggest mobile operator in Montenegro, providing mobile voice service, roaming service, data service and value-added service for users. Till 2011 Q2, Telenor Montenegro has 430 000 mobile subscribers. 3

As the leader in Montenegro mobile telecom market, Telenor Montenegro are developing rapidly. However, the legacy GSM/UMTS network has a limited capacity, and is not the All IP architecture, so it is lack of the capability to evolve to future network. Meanwhile, the original equipment vendor responds slowly, not fulfilling the requirements of fast new service deployment. In view of this, in 2009, Telenor Montenegro introduced new vendor to implement network swap. It required that the new vendor should have rich swap experiences, the swap should cause no impact to the stable operation, and its leading position in local market should be kept. The legacy equipment of Telenor Montenegro is being constructed for ten years. Many devices with non-standard interfaces such as OCS and AAA, various service platforms, and specific service realization method, all of these propose a very high requirement on core network. Finally, the whole debugging and integration process is finished smoothly. ZTE solved the problems during the swap as soon as possible, to accommodate to the legacy network to the maximum degree.

SPREAD THE WINGS TO FLY Till now, the new packet core network of Telenor Montenegro is launched after the successful swapping. Telenor Hungary has swapped the SGSN, GGSN and HLR as planned. Telenor introduces an intelligent unified packet core network platform through the network migration. The advance concept of separate control and bearer improves the platform performance greatly, and the equipment of huge capacity and high integration save the equipment room space. The platform supports the smooth evolution to EPC, reducing the TCO. Besides, the comprehensive core network solution based on the advanced platform brings many advantages to Telenor: PCC (Policy Charging & Control) solution provides better QoS; Deploying ZSP (ZTE Smart Pipe) solution in the future will help Telenor to change the dumb pipe to be smart pipe, adding revenue while saving cost. The whole procedure of Telenor network migration shows the normalization and professionalism of the project management. Choosing a highly-qualified partner is one of the most important factors for the successful network migration project. Steady and fast network swap enables Telenor to achieve smooth network upgrading. Therefore, it can rely on the new network to develop users quickly,

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enhance and improve its competence in local market, and support Telenor Group’s ambition to expand globally.

CUSTOMER BENEFITS z

Rich network swap experience and quick responding guarantee the smooth and stable migration to new network.

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The new platform of large capacity and high integration improves network capability, supports smooth evolution and development, and keeps the competence and leading position in the market.

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The innovative intelligent network solution based on the advanced platform and equipment improves network operation capability, increases revenue and saves cost.

“We will focus on installing new network elements with an emphasis on optimizing service quality and providing the best customer experience.” -- Christopher Laska, CEO of Promonte

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