Norwegian History

Norwegian Telecom has long been a pioneer within mobile communication services. Today, Telenor is in the forefront of efforts to develop the mobile technologies of the future. By 2008, UMTS – known as 3G (Third generation) mobile system – will have been in operation for several years. UMTS and EDGE have given millions of people access to vital information, health and bank services, education and business opportunities. In 2007, Telenor was granted a license to develop 4G (Fourth Generation) mobile broadband services.

The very first mobile service
As early as 1966, the first manual mobile operating system was in use. The majority of the country did not have coverage, but within the first decade, 10,000 subscribers were registered.  This operating system is known as OLT (Public Land Mobile Telephony). One of the drawbacks with this system was that anyone could listen in. OLT was abandoned in 1990 and no new concessions were granted after 1989.

The First Generation (1G): NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephony)
Nordic Mobile Telephony (NMT) was first introduced in 1981. NMT was one of the world’s most advanced mobile systems. For the first time mobile subscribers in eastern Norway could make direct calls to more than 60 countries around the world. By 1985, NMT-450 covered the whole of Norway.

Norwegian Telecom cooperated with the other Nordic countries to establish the common standard that resulted in NMT. Other countries such as the Netherlands, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia also adopted this operating system. This service was popular, but limited capacity resulted in an almost constant overload.  Considerable resources were used to upgrade and extend the coverage.

WAP
Telenor launched WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) in 1999 and was one of the first mobile operators in the world to offer the service. WAP gave people access to the Internet directly from their mobile phones. This standard linked GSM and the Internet. WAP gives access to information and Internet services, such as news and entertainment, banking and share trading.

The Second Generation (2G): GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications)
GSM is the result of cooperation between several European countries and the system was brought into use by USA and by several countries in Asia. Telenor was an important contributor in the development of the GSM-standard.

GSM was officially opened for service in 1993.  During the second half of 1994, Telenor Mobile GSM network was sufficiently developed to offer good coverage. In August, Telenor fully launched the marketing of the GSM service.

Norway – a world leader
Norway became the world leader in terms of number of mobile phones per person. Towards the end of 1995, 23.2% of all Norwegians owned a mobile telephone. In 1996, Telenor was the leading supplier of GSM-services in Norway. In 1999, Norway recorded the second highest penetration of mobile phone subscriptions in the world.  The use of SMS (Short Message Service) increased rapidly in the GSM network. Young people in particular accounted for the increase in traffic.

Upgraded GSM allowed for access to the Internet
GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) was launched in 2001 and was an upgrade of the GSM network. GPRS allowed the user to get access to the Internet and pay only for the amounts of data transferred.

EDGE - moving towards 3G technology
EDGE formed part of the Telenor commitment to 3G technology. In 2004, Telenor upgraded the GSM network with the so-called EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) technology. This enabled the company to offer its mobile customers improved quality, increased capacity and larger bandwidth in the existing GSM network. With EDGE the data transfer rate was three times what was possible before the GSM technology was submitted.
In 2006, EDGE was introduced in the market. The mobile network secured 3G services across the whole country.

The Third Generation (3G) network: UMTS
With UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), Norway received its 3G (third generation) network. In 1999, Telenor was granted a test licence for UMTS and initiated strategies for the next generation mobile system. Telenor considered it important to be in the forefront of UMTS developments in order to maintain a leading position in the mobile sector. 
The commercial launch of UMTS in Norway and Sweden took place in 2004.
Almost 170,000 people had coverage where they lived. By the end of 2004, the coverage extended to all built-up areas in Norway.

UMTS: A mobile broadband network
UMTS is a broadband network that gives access to services such as the Internet and directly transmitted TV broadcasts. The network provided an upgraded access to Internet services offered through mobile terminals. Live video and sound were some of the new features provided through the 3G solution. In 2007, Telenor, Norway is granted a license in the 2.6 GHz band for 4G (Fourth Generation) mobile broadband.

The topography of Norway with its many fjords, islands and high mountains made it costly to build fixed line cable networks. As early as 1903, radio transmissions were tested over the fjord between Røst and Sørvågen, in Lofoten. Røst was the centre of the fishing industry in Norway, and fish was the major export item. Linking the two fishing communities made the industry more productive. In 1906, radio transmission became a permanent extension of the fixed line network. This was the second permanent civil radio link in the world.

Independence and a new vision
During the 1990s, Telenor was transformed into a competitive business organisation.  These years saw the company expanding both domestically and internationally.  In 1994, after 11 years of political struggle, Norwegian Telecom became independent of the state administration.

The Olympic Games and communications
The Winter Olympic Games, held in Oslo in 1952, required an efficient and upgraded national telecommunications system, radio broadcast and connections with the international community. This proved to be a useful challenge for Norwegian telecom and had the effect of boosting technological development.

The Olympic Games, held in Lillehammer in 1994, would again prove to be a challenge in terms of communications. The extended communication needs led to a strengthening of the Norwegian infrastructure in terms of upgrading the existing cable network with fibre optics, enabling the transfer of data.  The use of mobile phones and the Internet service, ISDN, saw an explosive expansion during and in the aftermath of these games. The Lillehammer games represented a breakthrough in new services. ISDN became synonymous with Internet in the minds of Norwegians.

Internet – as an IP (Internet Protocol) based business - maintains a strong market position in Norway, as well as establishing a basis for further growth in Europe.

Internet services, such as ISDN and ADSL were first introduced in Norway through the upgraded telephone cables. ISDN remained a solely Norwegian product. Today, broadband mobile services such as UMTS provide access to the Internet in both remote and rural areas without fixed networks.

IP Telephony
IP (Internet Protocol) telephony is gaining in popularity as a broadband product. This is a cheaper and more efficient way of transmitting voice signals from one computer to another. Now in 2008, more than one million Norwegian households have broadband Internet connection, but still place their calls via the fixed telephone net. This pattern is gradually changing. People making long distance calls are beginning to see the advantage of this product.

A new and unpredictable market
During the mid 1990s, Internet proved to be an important technology. The rapid market penetration of the Internet came as a surprise to the Telecom industry. The Internet became the new innovative business area in Telenor in 1997.

The telephone is one of Norwegian Telecom’s oldest products. More than a hundred years after its introduction, the fixed telephone would provide the basis for advanced Internet technology, such as ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line).

Early days of the telephone business
The Monopolies Act of 1881 gave the State the exclusive right to transmit messages by means of the telegraph lines. In 1899, the Telegraph Act was passed and this gave the Norwegian state a monopoly over all telecom activities and developments.

The early telephone exchanges were operated manually. Automatic exchanges gradually replaced the old manual exchanges. This was a long process and was first completed in 1985. An exception was the old manual exchange in Karasjok that remained in use until this remote, northern area was covered by a mobile network in 1993. This particular exchange was kept in use because it was the sole means for the Sami people – the indigenous population of northern Norway – to communicate with the Sami winter camps.

Hello! Everyone wants a phone
The demand for a fixed line telephone increased during the more affluent post-war years. During the 1970s, Norwegian Telecom was not able to meet the demand for delivering regular phone subscriptions. In 1979, 94,000 names were on the waiting list.

Expansions in the 80s improved the capacity and most people were able to get a phone installed within a short time. During these years, new competence would lay the foundation for revitalising company services at a later stage.

The digitalisation programme for the Norwegian telecommunications network was complete by 1 December 1997. With this, Norway had one of the most advanced telecommunications networks in Europe. In 1975, the first computer-controlled exchange opened.  According to plans in 1985, Norway was set to become one of the first countries in Europe to operate a digital network within the next ten years. This plan proved to be a success. In 1997, the entire country had access to a digital network.  In 1986, there had been a large breakthrough in the use of fibre optics in the network. Cable systems with large capacity could now be built.

ISDN
Because of the advanced exchanges, new products and services were offered. ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) gave private homes and businesses access to the Internet. The service was launched in May 1994 and proved immensely popular in Norway.  All the end user needed, was a modem to translate the analogue signals into digital signals, understandable to the computer. Telenor had – at one point - 73,500 private ISDN subscribers.

Mobile Broadband
Mobile broadband made it possible for fast downloads of high quality video, music and film. In 2007, Telenor won the prestigious Meffy Award as best operator for adapting mobile content such as music, football and magazines to its Norwegian customers. In 2006, Telenor launched a football service in cooperation with the TV2, offering live high quality streaming and video clips of all goals scored. Telenor also gained first-mover advantage with its commercial model for music downloads in 2005. In Q1, 2007, Telenor became the second biggest legal distributor of digital music in Norway.

Increased capacity
In 1999, the main routes in the network were upgraded with fibre optic channel equipment (WDM), which increased the capacity. The network was prepared for broadband IP traffic transmissions. In the access network, new technologies such as ADSL were introduced. This allowed for much higher data transfer speeds than ISDN.
Its range of use included IP-telephony, online gaming, web-TV, download of large files and having several PCs online simultaneously. The capacity range was six megabit and higher.

Today, Telenor is the leading provider of broadcasting services within the Nordic countries.  In the 1950s, the Government assigned Norwegian Telecom legal responsibility for building a broadcast network for TV and radio. This marked Norwegian Telecom’s entrance into the TV distribution industry.

TV broadcasting
Until the mid 1980s TV-distribution technology consisted of terrestrial analogue radio and TV broadcasting. Norwegian Telecom started to investigate TV broadcasting using satellite communication. Cable TV was also introduced. In 1996, Telenor consolidated its position in TV distribution and became market leader in satellite-based broadcasting in the Nordic region.

Outside interests and new technology
Outside interests contributed to the drive into satellite communications.
The satellite communications technology was driven by the oil industry’s demand for better communication with its oil platforms in the North Sea. In addition, the Government wished to increase its presence in Svalbard during the cold war and Norwegian Telecom built the satellite communication with Svalbard.  Thirdly, the shipping business became an early customer base for satellite communication. These factors again offered incentives for taking the business abroad.

Satellite communication
Satellite communication between onshore bases and the offshore oil platforms in the North Sea opened in July 1976. The satellite system, NORSAT, provided a high quality network with oil platforms in the North Sea. Norway became the first country in Western Europe to have satellite communication for national use. In 1997, Telenor was the third largest European operator in the field of satellite communications.