Telia and Telenor ink merger agreement

NEWS Swedish telco Telia and its Norwegian counterpart Telenor have signed a final merger agreement today, after announcing their intention to join forces at the beginning of the year. Jan-Morten Ruud, senior vice president at Telia, told Silicon.com the merged company will focus on IP (Internet Protocol) based services to give it the edge it needs. "The IP global network is what we will use for all kinds of services. IP telephony is one of those services and we will also put data communications and other kinds of services on the network," he said. Ruud added that its existing telephony services "will merge into this network over time". Robin Duke-Woolly, principal analyst at Schema, believes the new company has a bright future. "International IP based services offer more opportunities than normal," he said. But Louis Seguineau, programme manager at Meta Group, was dismissive of the claims. "This is rubbish. IP won't give Telia an edge because it's still so crude - in Europe it's a pure connectivity issue that will win customers. "Telia has got advanced testing technology, but that is only small scale and in Scandinavia - where the culture is more adaptable to new technologies. But it couldn't work on a converged network because there are still too many problems that it hasn't addressed," he said. Seguineau added that the new company is highly unlikely to beat the big players such as BT, Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom in bringing universal IP-based products to market. The merger is still pending EU approval but is unlikely to be turned down. Tormod Hermansen will head up the company.