Telia: Bringing the World Closer through Technology

Telia is the leading telephone company and mobile network operator in Sweden and Finland. It has operations in all of the Nordic and Baltic contries, and in Central Asia and South Asia, with more than 182.1 million mobile customers. Recently, ZTE Technologies interviewed Hans Dahlberg, vice president of Telia and head of Telia  Global IoT Solutions. He shared with us Telia’s latest development of IoT, new solutions and projects, challenges and strategies, and the current status of IoT in Sweden. He also talked about his expectations for ZTE.
 
What can you tell us about Telia’s latest developments of IoT?

The latest development when it comes to IoT within Telia is that we are actually fulfilling our strategy that we outlined a couple of years back.
The first development is connectivity. Connectivity is at the heart of IoT. We connect products and services across industries and enable customers to reach multiple markets with the same connectivity solution, including SIM, integration and price plan. In addition, we have a dedicated production platform for connectivity, which enables us to deliver the next generation of IoT services. The platform provides automated activation and management of subscriptions, as well as real-time SIM diagnostics and tools to manage costs. What’s more, we powered up an international alliance—the Global M2M Association (GMA), which is a cooperation between the leading international tier-one operators.
The second development is that we are in the phase of launching a new product called Telia Sense, which improves car ownerships and makes it easier to check the health of the car, and get traffic information and additional offers from partners joined to the service. Telia Sense consists of hardware to put in the car, an app and a cloud service. It enables owners of old and new cars to connect the car to WiFi and get access to the same smart services. Not only is it easier to check the health of the car, car owners can also get offers from suppliers joined to the service, such as maintenance, car diagnosis and insurance services. This adds value for car owners, drivers, passengers as well as suppliers who join this platform, and creates a whole new eco-system for IoT-services.
The third development is that we created a digital ecosystem. With a strong connectivity base, we’re the hub in the digital ecosystem, empowering people, companies and societies to stay in touch with everything that matters. Establishing a digital ecosystem means that it is the first time we create value on data, and I think that’s a very important milestone. Normally, we only offer services and send information from point A to point B, but the digital ecosystem is much more than that.

 

Sweden is at the forefront of IoT, and I should say that our IoT services are on the foredeck. There is tremendous market growth happening right now in IoT.
There are several factors that have helped Sweden become a mature mobile and internet country. Sweden is the country that helped develop mobile telephones with excellent performance and that built the base for constructing mobile networks. The Nordics is the birth place of Ericsson and Nokia. Mobile broadband has developed rapidly, and mobile phone penetration is very high in the Nordic region. We have quite a long history in telecommunication, and our customers are highly experienced in using internet and mobile phones.
Second, regulatory push is a key factor. The Swedish government and the Europe Union have implemented clear and strict regulations for the telecom sector, and Sweden was the first country to deploy these regulations. Thanks to the regulatory push, we have a very high mobile phone penetration, and a significantly large M2M and IoT market share.
Third, we maintain a good relationship with both big companies and small start-ups. The collaboration between them is the key that has real effect on new technologies and solutions.

 

Telia Sense, as I explained it earlier, is one of our new solutions. In addidion to Telia Sense, we are continuously looking into new emerging technologies and possibilities in the field of IoT. Presently, we are focusing on how new technologies can help our customers shift their business models.
For instance, in a digital world our customters are moving from products to services. With good networks and access, our customers have profound knowledge about billing. Then we could help our customers with billing solutions, so they can increase their revenue through services.
We are also continuously working on digitalization. We believe the digital society is a global movement. When our customers delve into digitalization, they digitalize their companies and shift their business models.
Other new solutions include connected vehicles, connected buildings, connected people, connected money, connected consumer gadgets, connected industrial processes, and connected infrastructure. We are actively working in these verticals.

 

I think the first challenge is customer awareness. There are so many technologies, but customers need to understand that they have to change their business. In fact, they don’t really know how many technologies there are and what kinds of solutions they need. The first thing for our customers to do is a business assessment. How could they change their business based on technologies? I think from our side, what we can do is helping them in this area, because we understand these technologies very well. We have a highly experienced specialist team and management consultancy, and they stay relevant to our customers, to be their window to the connected world.
Second, the challenge is always between new technologies, new business models and opportunities, so I think we are in the phase that we need sales representatives, and they should be able to have business development discussions with our customers. That needs to have, maybe, a different profile.
The third challenge is to have enough resources that could help our customers with this kind of business reengineering. The resource is not only for the telecom industry, but also for the whole ICT sector. In terms of IoT, we need to have data scientists. If we are going to aggregate and analyze data, and do something worthy with it, we need to have these kind of resources. I think we have two major obstacles when it comes to resources, which are management reengineering profiles and data scientists. Now the technology is already there, and we have customers with business set up, so we need to tackle these two obstacles.
 
What is your strategy to ensure the security of IoT?

Well, our strategy is based on what we need to do when we release our own services. One thing is that we need to do audits in all parts of operations. Another thing is we have strategic partners like ZTE, and we rely on our partners to help us do inventory of the security. We would like to have different partners for various services, but we form a unified process and optimize it as needed.
I think the security of all systems is very important. We will use all the new technologies we have to ensure security. Sometimes, we even need to invite hackers to test our products. Therefore, we can see that we work in a really secure environment and the products we are selling are really safe.
However, we can’t always take full responsibility for all the things our customers do with our products.

 

In my opinion, there are a couple of things affect Telia’s business. First of all, IoT is what we call “close to the core”. It means that there is a slight difference between IoT services and the typical core services. However, as we all know, IoT ignites possibility and growth. The vast majority of operators are struggling for growth in their current business models, so IoT is of course a growth engine. It begins with rather low figures, but the progression is growing considerably year by year. I believe that IoT will have an effect on our business chain, and help us create value and growth.
Second, IoT ignites innovation, which affects our business in a dynamic way. If we have good IoT solutions, we will have huge advantages as an innovator. With innovative solutions, we can venture into areas close to our core business.
The third aspect is about market decision. If we can help our end customers with their business, they will be more loyal to us, because it is not only about selling subscription and terminals, but also about their business development. We actually help them improve their core business and create new value. By doing this, we create partnership with our end customers, and that is beneficial for both them and for us.

 

ZTE is an important partner for Telia, and it is participating in one of our biggest projects now. With ZTE’s support, we have delivered various services in different markets. This goes to prove that ZTE is a very important partner to us and we can trust ZTE’s team. I would like to say that ZTE has done well in Sweden.
Telia and ZTE have a young partnership, we are both entrants in a new market of IoT, and we have an understanding from both sides that there will be a number of challenges. Therefore, we can cooperate with each other to bring new features to our services, and develop new IoT technologies. Together we can deliver cutting-edge IoT solutions with seamless quality to our customers; I think that’s maybe the most important thing.
My expectation for the future is that we should explore even more areas. We have a very good roadmap, and our partnerships cover everything from IT consultancy to software development and security. Now we are on a mission to take Telia to the next level and create a new generation telco. To achieve this goal, I hope ZTE can work in close cooperation with us on the next generation products. I truly believe that we are well on our way to achieving this mission.