Creating a kid-friendly Internet for Malaysia
Five-point-two million child surfers will be riding the Internet’s waves in Malaysia by 2017.
A reality of an increasingly digitalized world to be embraced or a critical cause for concern?
The learning resources that an Internet connection offers young minds are not to be underestimated, but on the same token, how are kids kept from stumbling into the Web’s darker corners?
“Malaysians are actively working out a solution to this. DiGi and our global partner, the Telenor Group, a world leader in telecommunications, are helping Malaysia lead the charge in keeping children safe online,” said Christian Thrane, Chief Strategy and Corporate Affairs Officer, DiGi Telecommunications.http://www.telenor.com/asia/assets/malaysia/story-child2.png
From asia telenor

2

Helping moms help their children
Far too many babies in Thailand still begin their lives nameless. They are born unregistered, officially unknown to the state.
This can turn into a life of lost opportunities, as they miss out on basic rights to nationality, public services, vaccinations and education. UNICEF reports warn that unregistered children are also more vulnerable to human trafficking.
The problem sparked a larger, collaborative project between Telenor’s local partner, dtac and UNICEF, the Ministry of Public Health and the Bangkok Children’s Hospital. The idea was to launch the Best Start programme, beginning with the *1515 Mother & Child Info Service, an SMS and Hotline service to give moms vital information that ensures their youngest family members get off to the best possible starts in life. The programme will also soon launch its birth registration service to enable new moms to quickly and easily register their newborn children via mobile Internet.
“The Mother & Child service generates 1,000 informational SMS messages to help both expecting and new mothers registered at each stage of their pregnancy and delivery,” said Nattawan Sasipibool, Department Head, Social Responsibility, dtac Telecommunications.
“Within the Mother & Child programme, the SMS service is augmented by a 24-hour 20 line Hotline service housed at the hospital. This service is designed to reduce infant mortality and ensure that both mother and child live healthy lives and can be happy, productive members of Thai society,” continued Nattawan.
Following previous work in other countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, the Telenor Group knew that the mobile phone could be a powerful tool to convey life-saving information in hard-to-reach communities and will work to expand the Best Start programme nationwide in Thailand.
“This project demonstrates Telenor and dtac’s continued commitment to the people Thailand by using telecommunication technology to support underserved groups, especially underprivileged women and children. Helping parents give their children the best start in life is one way our Internet for All is already making a difference – right from the beginning,” said Telenor Group’s Ola Jo Tandre, Director of Corporate Responsibility.
Asia tlnr

Farmers reap the benefits of mobile internet.
Farming in Pakistan is huge. It makes up nearly a quarter of Pakistan’s GDP and is an enormous source of pride for Pakistanis. In the world’s 7th most populated country, domestically produced food cuts dependence on expensive, sometimes unreliable imports and helps drive the economy of the country’s heartland.
Chances are, if a Pakistani doesn’t live in one of the big cities, his or her livelihood depends on farming.
“Everywhere we do business, one of the most important things to us is understanding the people, knowing their needs, helping solve problems. We knew that many reasons to pay close attention to Pakistan’s farming community – so integral to the heart of the country in so many ways,” Ulf Karlsen, Project Manager in Telenor Group explained. “So we came up with a way we could leverage what we know best – telecommunications – to create a tool that would serve Pakistan’s farmers.”
“Farmers told us that they wished they had a way of seeing current prices of goods throughout Pakistan’s agricultural markets, and so, by collaborating with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, we gave them just that. We developed a pilot called Agricultural Commodity Trade (ACT) where we used mobile phones to collect and distribute market prices from day to day.”
ACT was launched as an SMS alert system in 2008 for which farmers could sign up to receive the latest price information. For the first time they could quickly calculate where to get the best prices for their produce.
The pilot was a success. Between mid-2009 and February 2011, more than 4,000 farmers took part in the SMS service.
In early 2011, Telenor expanded the project by partnering with Multan, a company selling pesticides, fertilizers and seeds to farmers. With the growing popularity of mobile phones, farmers everywhere could use Easypaisa – Telenor’s groundbreaking mobile-based banking service – to buy these produces at lower wholesale prices.
In 2012, Telenor took it a step further.
Joining forces with provincial government authorities, the Group launched a comprehensive agricultural and livestock information service for farmers in Mardan and Bahawalpur. The service shared the best farming practices and market prices via SMS with farmers throughout the region. The service currently feeds 3,000 farmers and counting.
“We’re going to keep building on this,” said Telenor’s Tughral Turab Ali. “Wherever we are, the end goal is a more stable, affordable food supply chain, richer and empowered farmers and happier, healthier consumers.”
The Telenor Group is now implementing a similar large-scale farming information system in Thailand.
Telenor Group Strategy
The Telenor Group has a strong track record of delivering on ambitious goals. By 2011,we aim to be one of the fastest growing mobile operators in the world, with a strong broadband position in all markets, successfully developing new services and adoptingnew and responsible business models.The Telenor Group has defined six strategic ambitions which it aims to achieve by 2011.These are:

To deliver increased profitable growth
The Telenor Group aims to achieve a substantial revenue increase in the years to come.This growth will mainly come from existing businesses. We will seek to increase our coremobile and fixed voice revenues and explore broadband opportunities in our emergingmarkets. The Telenor Group is also investing in adjacent markets, such as basic financialservices and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication worldwide
To strengthen our performance culture across the Group

In all our operating companies, we will continue the successful practice of combining alocal approach with global expertise. This means that the local management teams will build a unique performance culture based on their own initiatives and in line with theTelenor governance model, Codes of Conduct, vision and values, our people policy andthe way we work across borders. In terms of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE), our objective is to improve working conditions and environmental management by havingclearly defined standards across our operating companies and supply chains.
To make responsible business a competitive advantage
Corporate responsibility at Telenor will be part of managing risk and linked to our core business. For example, the measures we have taken to fight climate change are motivated both by our commitment to corporate responsibility and by an enlightened view of associated business benefits and opportunities: what is good for the environment is alsogood for business. Telenor now has clearly defined targets on CO2 emissions from itsoperations - not just to help save our planet, but to save energy and money. Telenor has astrong track record when it comes to sustainable business: it was ranked top performer bythe Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) in 2007 and 2008.
To provide a superior customer experience
Faced with an increasingly competitive environment, Telenor needs to differentiate itself by providing a superior customer experience. In our vision – we’re here to help – andcore values (make it easy, keep promises, be inspiring, be respectful), we put customer experience at the top of the agenda throughout the Telenor Group. One of our ambitionsis to reach a situation where end-users’ brand preference is higher than the Telenor marketshare for all operating companies.
To ensure best practice benchmarking across the Group
28

Report on Telenor Telenor will undertake benchmarking and best practice sharing across the Group. Aglobal objective is to achieve a higher reduction in the average operational cost per minute than the expected decline in average price per minute. The Telenor Group aims toachieve considerable continued growth in operating cash flow from all of its operations.
To drive change and constant renewal
To secure a strong industry position, we need to innovate in everything we do. To get themost out of our efforts, we have prioritized five group-wide innovation areas:
•
Broadband outside the Nordic countries. Our long-term ambition is to achieve thesame position in broadband (mobile and fixed) as we have in mobile voice today.
•
Connected objects / M2M. The “Internet of things.” The Telenor Group isworking to establish itself as a global player within this rapidly growing and potentially huge market.
•
Financial services. The Telenor Group aims to establish itself as a significant player in parts of the financial services industry in select under-serviced markets,establishing a platform for long-term growth.
•
Partner innovation. The Telenor Group controls many valuable assets that can befurther developed together with partners. Partner-driven innovation is a cost-effective way to create many new revenue-generating services.
•
Climate change. Our number one priority is to reduce CO2 emissions. TheTelenor Group aims to be part of the climate solution by de-carbonizing business processes and reducing physical travel and transport.
Improving our performance management
The Telenor Group aims to create a stronger link between the strategy process and performance monitoring. All operating companies will implement a new and improvedmanagement model where strategic objectives and ambitions are monitored closely at both the company level and the lower department level.
Challenges ahead
The global telecom industry is still growing and generating large profits. Looking ahead,we expect usage of mobile and fixed voice communications to grow significantly.Broadband also represents a huge growth opportunity. However, there are challengingtrends, e.g. maturing markets, financial instability, pricing pressures as well as regulatoryissues. Still, well-positioned players will benefit from market growth and increasedefficiency, enabling significant cash flows in the future Report on Telenor
Strategic Planning Process (Marketing Mix)
According to Bearden (2001), Strategic planning requires a nice combination of strategieswith products and other corporate resources. It requires the involvement of fair execution30

Report on Telenor of strategically plan from different functions like marketing, production, finance,distribution and others. For strategy formulation, there is a variety of decisions whichshould be there before its implementation. Where right entry mode strategy is necessary,there is also a need of appropriate product-market combination. Then other marketingmix elements should be given importance because these elements can be the backbonefor the business success
Telenor’s product Strategy
To get the real fruits of more open market at regional level requires the satisfaction of thedemands of the target market and this satisfaction can only be achieved if the product or service offered in the market is suitable and acceptable for its purpose and this can beobtained by adopting a regional product strategy suitable for company and the market aswell.Telenor’s study indicates that it is acting quite on this concept that, in order to be morecompetitive in the world market, firms should shift their emphasis from local customized products to globally standardized products that are advanced, functional, reliable and low priced. But here low priced strategy be to compromise and later on due to its quality,Telenor’s low price strategy takes shift from low to high but competitive.Buzzel (1968) argued that product standardization has different benefits (a) economies of scale, (b) faster accumulation of learning experience and (c) reduced costs of designmodification. In the regional open market, Telenor is taking the fruit of this by adoptingthe product standardization but the situation can be different in other markets. Thecompany used a multi domestic strategy to gain competitive advantage in its targetmarkets. A key factor in the strategy is the encouragement of senior managers to beentrepreneurial in responding to local customer needs, product quality and customer services.Telenor’s decision to standardize or adapt its products is based on cost/benefit analysis of what they believe the implications of adaptation and standardization are for profitabilityand market share. According to Doole (2000) in normal circumstances, the cost of adaptation would be expected to be greater than the cost of successful standardization.Telenor believes in long term advantages and not in satisfaction of immediate demand,that’s why they continue the exposure to the standardized products and services whichleads them to greater market share in the longer term.Our research shows that there are three factors which enforced the company towardsmore standardized strategy and these are illustrated in figure below.
•
Homogeneity of markets31

Report on Telenor
•
Increase in number of regionalizing firms
•
Identifiable international consumer segmentsSummarizing it, regionalization forced the company to rethink about its strategiestowards product, to be more competitive in the open market.
Telenor’s Price Strategy
Pricing across the borders is comparatively difficult from other decisions though it is believed that pricing is the most flexible and controllable marketing mix element.Companies operating in different markets experience extraordinarily difference across the borders. This can be due to the exchange rate difference and other barriers. But in our study, this matter is not much sensitive because of psychic distance factor. Culturalenvironment and a geographical neighborhood influence the pricing policy of Telenor. Onthe other hand, being a non member of European Union, it can be totally opposite of thegeneral strategies adopted by the companies located in European Union.Telenor’s pricing policy is influenced by different factors among them five are muchimportant and they are indicated below:
•
Market survival
•
Sales growth
•
Market position
•
Maximization of Profits
•
Maintenance of product’s qualityThough lower price is considered a suitable policy but in case of Telenor, it is affecteddue to regionalization but not so much but competition factor is given specialconsideration before development of price strategy. That’s why Telenor has high pricestrategy due to high quality products and services but at certain level penetration pricestrategy is adopted to stimulate sales growth.Here, at this aspect if we talk about the standardization or adaptation strategy of pricing,Telenor follows adaptation policy as well because it allows each local subsidiary or partner to set a price which is considered to be the most suitable for local conditions. Onthe other hand, lack of control can be the weakness of this strategy and it may requiresome cost for management.32

Criticism
After Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, he claimed during his visit in Norway to receive the prize that Grameen Bank had a gentlemen's agreement with Telenor where Telenor was to sell part of GrameenPhone to the bank.[citation needed] Telenor was not interested in fulfilling this agreement, arguing it was not juridically binding.[citation needed]
Telenor's subsidiary Grameenphone was fined multiple times and later sued because they participated in illegal VOIP operations. VOIP operations went against the BTRC's (Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission ) rules and as a result Grameenphone's offices were also raided in the process. BTRC claimed that the regulator and government was denied large revenue which Telenor/Grameenphone earned through these activities. Shortly after, Grameenphone's profits fell 32% when BTRC forced Grameenphone to cease VOIP operations.[citation needed]
A Danish TV documentary has revealed miserable working conditions and environmental violations at companies in Bangladesh that act as suppliers to GrameenPhone. Employees were shown working with hazardous chemicals and heavy metals virtually without protection. Workers were as young as 13 years, a clear violation of child labour laws. The firms were caught allowing polluted waste water to spill into nearby rice fields. And in one case, a worker was killed when he fell into an unsecured pool of acid.[citation needed]
Telenor opted to reveal some of the findings of the documentary even before it was aired.[25]
Nobel Peace Prize recipient and co-owner of Grameenphone, Muhammad Yunus, was considering taking legal action against Telenor, for the company's failure to stamp out the use of child labour by its subcontractors in Bangladesh. Telenor's CEO, Jon Fredrik Baksaas, promised to look into the matter.[26] angootha chalao
Telenor believes that campaign is an effort to inject positivity and encouragement amongst the youth and is also trying to instill hope through the tag line jab angootha chaley ga, umeed phelaye ga.
Telenor claims that the idea is further stressed through phrases like Must Vote Karna and Election 2013 mein vote karney ka ehad karo.
However, there are people who are objecting Telenor’s approach by saying that this awareness campaign comes with commercial aspects because Telenor is selling election encyclopaedia, a service with which Telenor customers can get election related queries, information about election halqas and polling booths, breaking news, election themed ringtones & wall papers and more. Just to mention, this is an opt-in service and involves users’ freedom of choice.
Critics say that Telenor’s is strategically mixing commercialism with CSR to sell products in the name of awareness campaign. In contrary, Ufone’s TVC against lottery fraudsters was a pure awareness campaign without involving any commercial affair
During past few weeks we tried to analyze Djuice Khamoshi ka Boycott campaign, and wrote on following topics: * The campaign itself, as we think it is spreading negativity * Telenor, if it must had to go with this campaign, could have done better with the execution of campaign, for instance, by not showing that uncle in its third ad. * Telenor showed dual standards by airing ad against cheating but then they copied a foreign AD for their own video.
Telenor Sonay Ki Jeet Offer and the Complications
By Ahsan Javed | 04, Jul 2011 | 87 Comments
Telenor Sonay Ki Jeet Offer is giving away gold prizes to lucky ones. You can stand a chance to win if you are lucky enough
Prizes start from 10 grams gold, while the big one is 1 kilogram Gold.
How to Participate:
To participate in the competition, you need to send “TS” to 7775 or dial *888# and after successful enrolment, you will be asked questions.
Reply with 1 or 2 for the correct option and you will be notified about your answer. Depending upon the correct answers, points will be given that will help you in winning the gold.
Each SMS to 7775 costs Rs. 8 + tax.
Prizes:
Offer lasts from 19th June, 2011 to 16th September 2011 and during this Telenor is giving away following prizes: * Two 10 grams gold coins daily * Two 25 grams gold coins weekly * One final prize of 1 Kg gold
Who Wins?
Contestant through lucky draw and with maximum number of points win gold on daily basis but for that you need to send SMS on that day to stand eligible for the prize.
Similarly for 25 grams gold, winners will be decided through lucky draw and on the points basis as well but you need to send SMS on Sunday as well for this prize.
And one final person with maximum number of points will win 1Kg gold prize.
Complications:
No doubt, offer is a big one – and it all seems very pleasant till here. But the problem is that Telenor is constantly luring (spamming) it’s customers by sending misleading text messages. One such message is as following:
Apka number 03xxxxxxxx 10g sona rozana, 25g sona/Itwar aur 1KILO Sonay ke liye muntakhib hogya hai! Abhi 7775 par blank SMS bhejein! Rs. 8+t/SMS
It is unclear if this message was sent to selected Telenor customers or it was broadcasted over the entire network. We can identify few of those numbers if Telenor want to carry out an internal inquiry to find out the responsible for sending such misleading text messages to their customers.
It is also unclear that how much money Telenor has generated through the campaign.