Telenor and Alphabet’s Google Cloud have formed a partnership to digitize the Norwegian telecommunications company’s global operations and are looking for ways to jointly provide services to customers, the two companies said on Monday. .
Companies will not only use Google Cloud’s service to promote By Telenor Their CEO told Reuters.
Oslo-based Telenor serves 172 million customers with about half of its revenue generated in Asia and half in Northern Europe.
The digitalization project will mean a major transformation for Telenor, but also part of its ambition to find new revenue streams, said Telenor CEO Sigve Brekke.
“I think the future of telecom companies is beyond connectivity and creating value on the basis of connecting customers,” he said.
With networks increasingly dependent on software, Telenor’s need to build a cloud-based business and Google’s ability to deliver data management, machine learning, and artificial intelligence knowledge makes it became relevant, Brekke added.
“Digitalizing our operation is about making it smoother,” says Brekke. “You can predict outages before they happen … when you replace some of your backend processes, you can improve customer experiences and make them better.”
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said that digitizing the core operations of a large telecom company like Telenor is new to Google Cloud, and so are general customer services.
Among the first services the two are expected to provide together is a platform to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) transition to digital operations.
“It’s not just about optimizing data centers and moving data centers to the cloud,” Kurian said.
“The work we’re doing with small and medium-sized businesses … we don’t just deliver as a technology provider, but build a shared service for a segment of customers.”
© Thomson Reuters 2021
