FORNEBU, Norway -- Telenor is the first telecoms operator to launch a Unified Communications (UC) solution on the Norwegian market. A total of 30,000 Telenor employees currently use Unified Communications services. This important internal experience forms the basis for the product being launched commercially today.

"Unified Communications is a mix of a number of forms of communication. It is a customer-tailored service where speech, data, text, video and conferencing solutions are linked up both from a functional and a technical point of view. The new element in this connection is that it is integrated, and that gives users much more flexibility to perform their duties irrespective of time and location," explains Abraham Foss, Head of Business Markets at Telenor and responsible for the company's efforts in the field of Unified Communications in the Norwegian market.

Enormous market potential

With this launch, Telenor aims to establish itself as a major player within Unified Communications. This will be an important factor in customer retention in the annual total turnover for speech in the business market, which amounts to around NOK 6.9 billion (source: Gartner).

"Unified Communications will form part of the core business at Telenor. The solutions are communications-based and in line with our other business activities. Telenor aims to achieve the same market position in this new sphere of communications as we occupy in the old one. Even though Norway is an innovative market, it will take between four and eight years before most Norwegian companies have the same natural relationship with Unified Communications that they currently have with email," Foss says.

You have to walk before you can run, and you need experience to draw on before you can sell!

Telenor has been gathering useful experience on the organisational effects of Unified Communications during a project that has been running for the last three years. This knowledge has been tightly bound into the commercial product to be sold. Just like when Telenor moved to ultra-modern open-plan office premises in Fornebu 10 years ago, the introduction of Unified Communications for the company's 30,000 staff has been an equally important and strategic change for the organisation.

"The tangible effects of working with Unified Communications are that the organisation collaborates better. People learn more as the development of skills and the gathering of best practice information are easier to get hold of. Information sharing increases and that means that the efficiency of working processes increases, too. Less travelling means less time pressure for employees, while also having benefits in terms of climate change and cost savings. Unified Communications will provide Norway's businesses with many of the effects that Telenor itself has seen. What is more, a broader spectrum of forms of communication can be useful in recruitment processes targeting a younger audience," Foss continues.

Telenor Group (Nasdaq: TELN)