Telenor Group’s CEO, Sigve Brekke, stressed that they are aiming to deliver a new technology firm in Thailand’s telecom sector by collaborating with other international companies.
This comes after Telenor and Axiata were granted regulatory approval in Malaysia to proceed to the Celcom-Digi merger.
In his statement, Brekke said, “What Telenor is trying to build in Thailand is not a telco company. We are trying to build a new technology company that will enable Thailand to take advantage of the perfect storm of technologies and deliver new products and services for Thailand. We can only do so if we have scale to partner these global companies. A small local telco will not be of interest to these global companies who are going after scale.”
Jørgen Rostrup, EVP and Head of Telenor Asia meanwhile said, “We believe the amalgamation of dtac and True will create a strong company who can invest and contribute to future digital and technology development in Thailand. This is an opportunity for Thailand to be propelled into growth 2.0 and put the country in the forefront. Thailand needs two strong market players, not one strong and two weak.”
The company also stressed that Thailand now enjoys 86% mobile access, or about 98.5 million mobile connections from 20 years ago.
Brekke added that for the next two decades, Telenor’s development in the local market is seen to be different, wherein the industry will be facing what he calls a “perfect storm of new technologies”. These include the integration of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and 5G.
He also predicts a data explosion and AI will be necessary to justify of the huge amounts of data generated, as well as the need for 5G speed for a much wider connection.
