Telenor’s Initiatives Acclaimed At Voice & Data Telecom Leadership Conference & Awards 2016

•  Bagged award for project Sampark under product innovation

•  Won marketing and customer service award for the success of Rebranding and Life Insurance campaigns

• Received award for Lean GSM under Internet and Broadband Services

With the vision of enabling the customers to improve their lives, build societies and secure a better future for all, Telenor India, with the power of digital communication is creating a positive local impact. The approach of creating shared value has made Telenor India to bag three prestigious awards at Voice & Data Telecom Leadership Conference & Awards 2016.

Telenor’s Project Sampark has been recognised for “Product Innovation”. This product comes with the dual sim pack that incentivises the female customer with every recharge, helping bridge the mobile gender gap. The rebranding and life insurance campaigns won under ‘Marketing and Customer Service’ category. For another major initiative of 2015, to invest in its entire network to modernize with state-of-the art equipment and commercializing lean GSM solution in partnership with Huawei, Telenor India bagged third award under the ‘Internet & Broadband Services’ category. This project is aimed at providing superior voice and data experience to the customers and become future ready.

“This is a proud moment for Telenor India and we are encouraged to achieve these coveted awards. We aim to provide seamless customer experience by connecting the unconnected in all the markets. We had launched Project Sampark to address the socio-economic causes behind the mobile gender gap and increase women’s access to mobile phones in the rural areas of India. Besides that, our marketing campaign to establish new brand proposition and the Telenor free life insurance initiatives substantiate our stance of making ‘life full paisa vasool’ for our customers. Our partnership with Huawei is a pivotal step towards our future strategy which not only makes us efficient but also reduces energy consumption and carbon emission immensely”, said Sharad Mehrotra, CEO, Telenor India.

Currently, Project Sampark is successfully running in the UP West circle where pilot was conducted in 87 villages of Aligarh. There is a huge success of this initiative as acknowledged by many industry bodies. The company aims to take this further to the newer areas with similar demographics. A study by Telenor conducted in the pilot area, revealed that in the remote areas like villages of Aligarh in the UP West circle, men of the house usually make the decision on whether a woman should own her own personal phone. To address this issue, Telenor piloted Project Sampark in the remote villages of Aligarh. This project looked at approaching the barriers to mobile adoption through a two-pronged strategy to address key barriers like cost, culture, technical literacy and perception of values, which discourages women to adopt mobile telecommunication services.

As the company acquired its global identity by changing its brand name from Uninor to Telenor, a planned effort towards making all the stakeholders believe in the new brand identity was of immense importance. It was a massive exercise which was carried out overnight to make the changes in every nook and corner where the old brand identity existed. As part of the new brand strategy, Telenor India decided upon ‘Reasons to Believe’ (RTBs) for the acceptance by all stakeholders especially customers. Offering free life insurance was one of the major RTBs as offered by the new brand. Currently more than 20 million Telenor subscribers have been enrolled and over 8 million have got free life insurance cover. The company has also settled more than 20 claims pan India.

As part of the 25000-site network modernization journey, Telenor India commercialized its Huawei’s Lean GSM solution, paving the way for mobile broadband (MBB) transformation in its six circles. The solution has been deployed in 28 cities, including Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Varanasi. Huawei’s spectrum efficient Lean GSM solution improves the network capacity by over 30% using the same spectrum resources and provides superior voice and data experience. This solution uses GPS-based synchronization and automated interference management based on real time network measurement. Additional capacity can also be utilized in spectrum reframing for LTE introduction.