Telenor is the largest telecommunications operator in Norway. The headquarter is located at Fornebu, close to Oslo.
It was formerly state-operated, and called Televerket. The Norwegian state still owns a majority share of its stock.
Following the 1998 telecom deregulation in Norway, several local (PowerTech, ..) and foreign (Telia, Tele2, WorldCom, ..) companies established themselves as new entrants in the Norwegian telecommunications markets, initially providing carrier pre-selection ("prefix")-based services.
Telenor is also the largest Internet Service Provider in Norway. However, during 1999, the company for the first time experienced major competition in the dial-up services arena when Start Networks and Sense Communications started offering free dial-up Internet access. These competitors combined hold more than a million registered users, a large part of the Norwegian dial-up market.
Telenor was forced to provide local loop unbundling in 2000, and subsequently providers of DSL services such as Catch Communications , NextGenTel and PowerTech flourished, in addition to Telenor itself. There is good geographic coverage for DSL, and prices are relatively low, so DSL has become the major access vehicle for Norwegian Internet users lately, to some extent replacing dial-up access.
Surprisingly, very few competitive operators have started offering basic access (POTS, ISDN BRI) services in the Norwegian market, so Telenor still has a de facto monopoly in this market segment.
The Opera web browser was created in 1994 by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Geir Ivarsøy during their tenure at Telenor. Opera Software was established in 1995 after the pair went on to continue development of their browser.
In February 2004, Telenor took control of a major Danish mobile telephone operator, Sonofon.
In additon to being Norway's lagest ISP and telephone operator, it's also Norway's largest mobile operator, with over 2 million customers in Norway. Telenor Mobile has also many abroad operations owning and partly owning mobile operators in, among others: Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Hungary and many more.
Telenor R&D is Norway's largest research establishment within ICT.
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