New owner, new name: Telia Carrier becomes Arelion

• International data network services giant Telia Carrier was sold by Telia in 2021
• Now it has a new name, Arelion, and a new identity
• But the business focus hasn’t changed – the team is now focused on further market expansion and sales growth, says the CEO

Telia Carrier, the international operator has been a standalone operation since it was sold by its former parent Telia to Polhem Infra last year, has unveiled its new name – Arelion. 

But while the name has changed, the focus of the international data network services giant, which provides Internet transit, wavelength and Ethernet services to CSPs and enterprises, has not, says CEO Staffan Göjeryd: His team of more than 500 is still very much focused on growing a networks and services company that is absolutely vital to the safe and speedy delivery of Internet and enterprise traffic across the world. 

The sale by Telia, in a deal valued at SEK 9.45 billion ($1.04 billion), was first announced in November 2020, with Telia Carrier becoming a standalone operation backed by Polhem Infra (an investment company jointly owned by some of the largest Swedish Pension Funds) in June 2021. (See Swedish fund splashes $1bn on Telia Carrier, eyes further infrastructure investments.)

Now the company, which operates a 70,000-km optical backbone network that spans North America, Europe and Asia and reaches 125 countries, has a new name and an image (the asterisk symbol that can morph into a spinning globe) that, it believes, reflects its focus on connectivity, notes Maja Sever, the company’s head of marketing. “The name is not a word you will find in the dictionary, but at the heart of it is the English adjective ‘reliable’,” which reflects one of the kay attributes of the company as revealed by customer research undertaken last year, she says. 

And Sever has really gone to town on the rebranding of the company, selecting a colour palette that “represents the visual spectrum of light” and a new typeface that includes “special connectors” to represent “how two points are connected with our cables.” 

So with a new look and identity, the company, which is generating annual revenues of about €600 million, is now focused on doing more of what it already does and doing it even better, says CEO Göjeryd. 

“We've enhanced our position in particular for the Internet domain over the past year-and-a-half and that is really a growth business for us going forward and we will continue to expand our footprint to even more data centres and markets around the world,” particularly in North America and to serve the needs of enterprise customers, says the CEO. “The pandemic has accelerated demand for Ethernet and other enterprise services,” he adds. 

The expected growth will need more manpower too, so Göjeryd says he expects to grow the company’s headcount by up to 10% during the course of 2022. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV