Norway’s independent consumer council blamed a lack of competition in the mobile sector for high data tariffs, in comments made as part of a newspaper expose on comparative connectivity costs across the region.

Aftenposten, one of Norway’s largest newspapers, ran a front page story claiming data services were much cheaper in nearby countries. It cited NOK300 ($35) would buy an allocation of 3GB to 6GB in Norway, compared with 50GB in Denmark and 15GB in Sweden.

Finn Myrstad, director of digital services at the Norwegian Consumer Council, said the market was “obviously suffering from a lack of competition”.

On the consumer authority’s website, it lists creation of a price comparison service for mobile services as one of its priorities. This, it believes, will “help highlight the limited options that exist in this market”.

In response to the Aftenposten article, a Telenor representative told the newspaper it invests far more in Norway than Denmark and pointed to high costs associated with building networks in the former.

Telia communications director Henning Lunde noted there were many aspects impacting pricing outside of competition, including consumption patterns, demand and costs.

Competitive landscape
GSMA Intelligence estimated Telenor and Telia held a combined 88 per cent of the 7.9 million connections in Norway (including cellular IoT) in Q2. The remainder use Ice or one of the specialist operators in the market.

In Denmark, by the same metric, TDC led with a 38 per cent share of the country’s 10.5 million connections with no other operator holding a share of more than 21 per cent. Other players include Telia, 3 and Telenor.

Sweden, which has 27 million connections, was led by Telenor with a 49 per cent share, more than double its nearest competitor, Telia. Tele2 and 3 are also among the other players, with more than 1.9 million connections.