Staffan Göjeryd, CEO of Arelion – the former Telia Carrier, now owned by Swedish pension funds – told Capacity at ITW this week that not only is the company wanting to “go deep, to more locations”, but “we want to add new markets”.
At the forefront of his goal are enterprise users, including “obviously financial services, which have a global footprint”. The opportunity for persuading financial companies to become customers usually follows a change of chief information officer, he added.
“But we’re not necessarily segment-bound,” said Göjeryd. “We can find cases in manufacturing, health and other sectors.”
Nichols, who appointment was announced this week at ITW, “is coming to Arelion with a better understanding of the market”, said Göjeryd. “He will address the right sort of customers.”
Meanwhile Arelion, which Swedish pension funds bought for €935 million last year, is continuing to develop its core carrier market, said Göjeryd. “We’re continuing to expand in the US, where we’re overbuilding our existing footprint, adding new fibre and new destinations.”
He wouldn’t say how much Arelion is spending on the expansion: “It’s a fair chunk, but we’re now more visible in the US”, with presence in tier 2 and tier 3 markets.
In Europe the company is adding “a bunch of PoPs” and in Asia “we are beefing up the network”, he said.
Meanwhile Linxa Connect announced at ITW that Arelion will use its platform to improve its wholesale voice business.
Arelion is replacing three legacy systems with a “fully integrated, end-to-end wholesale management platform”, said Linxa.
Simon Dodsworth, VP and head of voice trading at Arelion, said: “Not only do we benefit from higher levels of automation and control, we are also better equipped to offer the high quality, secure, competitively priced voice solutions that our customers expect, day in, day out.”
Kunal Dave, Linxa’s VP of global sales, said: “We aim to constantly evolve our platform so we can empower Arelion to remain at the forefront of the industry.”
