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Norway's Telenor to launch retail roaming in Asia

Xinhua, March 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

The chief executive of Telenor Jon Fredrik Baksaas has confirmed the Norwegian telecommunications company will launch retail roaming in its Asia markets as part of its plan to increase data roaming usage to 80 percent over the next two years.

"Each country in the Telenor group in Asia will take its decision based upon some principles -- affordability, cost control and simplicity," he said at a press briefing on Tuesday at the annual GSMA Mobile World Congress, whose tenth edition started here Monday.

Baksaas did not mention any specific time-frame for launching the service in Asia markets, saying it was "up to each market to do things like that and implement them one by one."

With operations in six Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand, it is the only European telecom company which reaches across the region.

Speaking to the media, Sigve Brekke, head of Telenor Asia, said data roaming is currently very expensive and that his company was "trying to implement free data roaming when one can pay for a day and have an unlimited data access."

He explained much of this is driven by what is happening in Europe where the European Commission is attempting to force operators to do away with roaming charges.

These challenges mean "we have separate projects to make this customer friendly," said Brekke, who highlighted that Telenor group currently offers roaming service for Bangladeshis in Malaysia. Endit