The cluster strategy has either been introduced or is being introduced across all of Telenor's Asian operations. The strategy was developed - by necessity (is the mother of all inventions) - in India, where Telenor's brand Uninor has focused its efforts on the ground, given the significant competitive intensity of the market and the significant differences between the demographics and financial capacity of its customers.
The idea is to put together all the elements of decision-making and separate parts of the business (distribution, network, etc) at a cluster rather than a nationwide level. We discuss the strategy in more detail for Grameenphone (GP), as we see the benefits in Bangladesh as typical of what could be achieved across the rest of Telenor's Asian footprint over time.
India remains challenged as Telenor needs to build scale and acquire more spectrum. On a standalone basis Telenor India may not lack scale in the circles where it is already present in the medium term, but we think it will need to come up with a strategy to both consolidate the market and increase its spectrum holdings in order to effectively compete in data.
