Telenor ASA

Telenor ASA which owns DiGi and O2 UK and O2 Ireland, is on a spending spree again! This time, they are willing to invest in India. This could be done through buying a controlling stake in Unitech Wireless for US$1 billion. It will give them freedom to control the company as thr buy out represents 60 percent share of the company.

According to the report by Goh Thean Eu of NST, Telenor ASA is trying to conquer the world's telecommunication sector. In Malaysia, DiGi is facing a stiff competition from other mobile operators like Maxis and Celcom. U Mobile is quite a new company so their subscriber figures are not as high as others. In fact, I heard that Tan Seri Vincent Tan sold off his controlling stake in DiGi and formed U Mobile (taking the prefix of 018 formally used by Mobikom 018 which was owned by Sapura Telecommunication).

While U Mobile is more like 3 mobile service providers, many people will find that U Mobile's service and price plan are not as good as Maxis and DiGi. I have to say that U mobile's coverage is not as good as Maxis but DiGi's price plans are more worth while. It is undisputed that Maxis is the champion in the area of coverage while Celcom would take home as the most subscribers based network.

DiGi still holds the champion of prepaid or pay as you go service in Malaysia. This will set to change as Maxis have lowered its tariff charges, matching DiGi's. Boy, I would say that it is one good competition! For those people in Malaysia, calling another person on the same network is relatively cheaper than calling a number on different network. However, with U Mobile, calling any mobile numbers in Malaysia will be charged at the same price! It goes the same to sending a text message. Cool, eh?

I feel that Telenor ASA is playing a safe ball right now. O2 UK and Ireland are good investment and their tariffs are cheaper than other mobile service providers in the UK, particularly against Vodafone UK. However, it will be much better if O2 were to release new mobile phones faster than Vodafone. In that sense, O2 will gain more customer. As for me, I am a customer of both O2 and Vodafone. In Malaysia, I am also a customer of DiGi and Maxis.

These day, you do not need to carry two mobile phones if you are using two sim cards. Modern phones like the Samsung SGH-780, 880 Duos and the 980 (touchscreen) will ensure that customers will have dual sim cards on active standby and you can also share contacts between two sim cards. I have the Samsung SGH-780 and it works fine.

However, I would still prefer my good old Nokia E71-1...Superb Nokia engineering!!! I just can't wait for Nokia to release their successor to the Nokia E71-1. Bravo Nokia! THE e71 is a serious contender to RIM's Blackberry. Think again RIM! Seriously, I don't really like Blackberry as you still can't beat Nokia's good OS, the mighty Symbian OS 9!!!