Through an agreement with Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), Telenor now has the ability to launch its own store for digital content, giving its customers easy access to a wide variety of personalized digital media services such as music, applications, games, e-books and video. Telenor subscribers in Serbia are the first to find the content they want most in a single, localized storefront that knows who they are and what they like. The DMS solution will be deployed by Telenor on a country by country basis from the beginning of 2012 onwards. Its affiliate in Serbia has been first to commercially launch the service in May 2012.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Digital Media Store (DMS) enables Telenor to provide its customers with a rich blend of services and content and more from a single, cloud-based ‘entertainment hub’. Instead of having to search for content in various sites that may or may not be compatible with their device, DMS provides Telenor subscribers with a one-stop shop where they can easily discover, acquire and use any content, across all their connected devices including PCs, feature phones, smartphones and tablets.
Because DMS is cloud-based, Telenor can quickly launch storefronts without deploying local operating platforms, and with minimal adjustments can expand the service to other countries. This enables Telenor to rapidly launch advanced multi-content services in its business units at a lower cost, and provides them with flexibility in content partnerships as it becomes easy to extend content distribution agreements to new markets.
Kristin Skogen Lund, EVP and Head of Telenor Digital Services said: “Digital content distribution is becoming more important. Launching our own store for digital content evolves our service distribution capabilities, and helps us remain relevant to our customers. We chose Alcatel-Lucent’s managed and cloud-based solution in order to make it easy for all Telenor business units to deploy and operate a localized store while best leveraging Telenor’s scale. It was particularly important to have a flexible solution which caters for all content categories and device types including feature phones. This agreement will provide us with support in three areas: deployment and platform hosting, content operations and management and content sourcing and merchandising.”
Adolfo Hernandez, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Software, Services & Solutions group said: “Every country has a different consumer environment, and Telenor has a particularly diverse subscriber base. The flexibility and adaptability of our DMS solution therefore made it a good fit for Telenor which is looking to meet the individual needs of subscribers in both developed as well as fast-growing markets across Europe and Asia.”
