Telenor launches Unified Communications
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.
With this launch, Telenor aims to establish itself as a major player within UC. 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.
Pilot includes a number of customers
One of the customers piloting UC from Telenor is Sør-Trøndelag County Municipality. “Schools have just begun to see the enormous potential of Unified Communications. The County Municipality has an ambition for every secondary school pupil to be able to take advantage of UC. This will make it possible to improve the interaction between pupils and teachers and to maintain the range of subjects offered to pupils in smaller schools,” comments Ragnar Kvithyll, Project Leader in the ICT Service at Sør-Trøndelag County Municipality. Alongside Sør-Trøndelag County Municipality, the following businesses are also piloting this Telenor solution: Sykehuspartner (Helse Sør-Øst), DnBNOR, Istad, APL, Atea, EDB, ErgoGroup and Umoe.
Telenor partner
Knut Aasrud, General Manager of the Telecoms and Media Sector at Microsoft for the European, Middle-Eastern and African markets, observes that Telenor is an innovator. “Internally, Telenor has Europe’s largest installed UC solution and it will be the first telecoms player in Europe to be certified by Microsoft,” Aasrud reveals.
Multi-phase launch
Unified Communications from Telenor will be delivered in three phases running up to 2011. Phase one covers a selected number of large companies. Telenor aims to be able to offer a customer-specific UC solution in the first quarter of 2010. A standardized UC solution will also be on the market for small and medium-sized companies in 2011.
Source: Telenor.com
