Telenor
More info
- Released
- 1855 (as the state telegraph), Telenor since 1995
- Owner
- Norwegian state (majority)
- Type
- Telecom operator
Norway's old state telecom, which was corporatised, listed, and then went to Asia to find the customers Norway didn't have enough of.
The Norwegian Televerket became Telenor in 1995 and listed on the Oslo exchange in 2000, with the state keeping a majority stake. A year earlier, a merger with Sweden's Telia had collapsed after a few months of squabbling over headquarters and political control — the great Nordic telecom giant was postponed, permanently.
Telenor grew east instead: Grameenphone in Bangladesh, dtac in Thailand and Digi in Malaysia brought in more subscribers than Scandinavia ever could. In Sweden it bought both Vodafone's Swedish business and Bredbandsbolaget in 2005. A historical footnote: the Opera browser started life as a research project at Telenor before Opera Software was spun out.