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Telkom seals roaming deal with Norway’s Telenor

Samuel Mungadze
By Samuel Mungadze, Africa editor
Johannesburg, 16 Sept 2020
Althon Beukes, chief executive officer of Telkom’s Openserve wholesale division.
Althon Beukes, chief executive officer of Telkom’s Openserve wholesale division.

Telephony company Telkom has signed a three-year roaming deal with multinational telecommunications group Telenor, to improve its roaming retail offering to its end-users.

The Norwegian telco will now be responsible for the full end-to-end wholesale roaming process for Telkom SA.

Telenor offers mobile network operators (MNOs) a complete managed service, which includes commercial management, financial management, coverage and rollout management, and quality assurance management in wholesale roaming.

Telkom says the managed roaming service enables the MNOs to utilise and be part of Telenor’s group scale to optimise wholesale roaming revenue and cost, as well as operational excellence.

The partnership will run for three-and-a-half years.

Telenor Group, which has been in existence for over 160 years, connects its 182 million customers across Scandinavia and Asia.

Althon Beukes, chief executive officer of Telkom’s Openserve wholesale division, comments: “Partnering with one of the world’s major mobile groups such as Telenor helps us to scale our retail roaming services and improve operational efficiency, which is very important to cater for our corporate and leisure travellers in SA.

“We have a long-standing and important relationship with Telenor. Their extensive roaming coverage, combined with the vast experience and competence, is significant in providing our end-users with the desired roaming experience.”

Andre Nicholas Hansen, chief partnership officer of Telenor’s global wholesale unit, welcomed Telkom to the fold, saying: “We are delighted to support Telkom with reduced wholesale roaming cost as well as operational cost. This is realised by making use of Telenor’s scale, simplified global processes, and highly experienced team.

“Speed in service launches, superior quality and improved cost will be even more important in the years to come, especially with increased pressure on the business and further consolidation that we see in the market. We are looking forward to succeeding together with Telkom in this initiative.”

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