Looking forward, Brekke said that he expects data growth to grow from 15% today to 80% by the end of 2017.
“2015 will be the year the bottom of the pyramid will demand Internet,” he said.
Asked about the lawful intercept requirements, Brekke said that Telenor is clear that any lawful intercept must be governed by clear rules. In most countries that is either a court order or an order from government.
Asked if the number of lawful intercept requests had risen in Thailand since the May 22nd coup, he said, “No. Not really. We had an issue with Facebook but other than that the answer is no, we are working as before.”
On the spectrum front, most operations were getting by though India was a particularly difficult challenge where Telenor has just 5 MHz on 1800-MHz and 40 million customers. He also noted that a shortage of IPv4 addresses were also a problem in India.
Brekke said that these days it’s important to have a mix of high and low-frequency spectrum, not just handing out more spectrum in the upper bands.
Telenor expects to see capable 4G handsets in the $40 to $50 price bracket within a year. When the hardware reaches this price point, the challenge then becomes the content. The new market that is opening up will not all be using Facebook or Whatsapp, and it is up to Telenor to help develop relevant content for this new mass market. This will be in the form of financial services for the unbanked, health and insurance, agricultural price information and education.
In Thailand, Telenor has sponsored 15 startups, three of which have already received funding from venture capital.
Then there is education. Many people still do not know what the Internet can do for them and many still have this perception that the Internet is evil.
Asked how Telenor is working to rebuild trust and security in the wake of the Snowden revelations, Brekke said that on the one hand Telenor is doing everything it can to secure its networks from attacks on the outside. The company is constantly upgrading and he admits that it is probably not happening fast enough.
“This is really an issue on the top of the agenda of all operators. We are learning from each other,” he said.
Privacy for the consumer will be a bigger issue going forward and it is important to win back consumer confidence.
“I cannot tell you what we are going to do, but what I can say is that it is really high on the agenda,” he said.
Asked about the move by Apple with its soft SIM and now Google with its reports of a Wi-Fi - MVNO Hetnet and if this would soon relegate the telco into nothing more than dumb pipe, Brekke disagreed and said that this model was unlikely to make it out of the United States. In Asia it is a whole different ballgame with licensing, regulation and distribution.