Drinks with Anders Borde from Telenor

Rating: more to Norway than fjords

by Bena Roberts

Last night I met Telenor’s Anders Borde. Anders is the Project Director for new business. We met in Carnaby Street and the initial plan was to talk business for half an hour and then have a night out. Guess what happened. We sat down started talking and didn’t move for hours! Of course we only talked advertising, portals and search.

There are a lot of things that I can’t talk about but Anders new business division sound impressive. The operator strategy is set to change to embrace 2.0 and Telenor has definitely increased its position on my watch list. It was also fantastic to meet someone with a strong vision for new business and the ability to embrace the latest new services. I have spoken to a lot of mobile operators and talking in depth about the potential of search and advertising in an embracing rather than confused state is a breath of fresh air.

But what was also great is that Anders has been with Telenor in mobile portals for the last six years. He was involved in djuice and has followed the rise, fall, rise and everything else of portals and it was great sharing ideas and perspectives. I had a little demo of the Telenor portal and saw Sesam. (This was great because I am currently writing an analysis of Mobile People the search company behind Sesam so I had a quick live demo).

Anyway, meeting Anders last night was great and I’ve been invited to Oslo so if everyone else at Telenor is as impressive as Anders I’m going to have a great time!