Telenor and Cisco teamed to launch WorkingGroupTwo (WG2), a cloud platform business designed to simplify the launch of new services in IoT and other industry verticals by operators.

In a joint statement, the companies explained W2G will offer a mobile core network as-a-service and -platform to enable operators to “better position their business to sell to enterprise customers”.

Sigve Brekke, Telenor CEO, said W2G is a “a pioneering telco platform with the potential of bringing the whole industry forward.” The Norway-headquartered operator will “give the entity the freedom to unleash wider industry ecosystem dynamics”, he explained.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said the companies’ combined approach will “help mobile operators automate the delivery of mobile cloud services and deliver innovation at a faster pace.”

The companies appointed Erlend Prestgard, former head of strategy at Bangladesh operator Grameenphone (in which Telenor is the majority shareholder), CEO of W2G.

“We want it to be easy to become an operator and to make new products,” Prestgard said.

“Our mission is to expose the powerful capabilities of operators to a wider community and, together with partners, we hope to build products that consumers have never seen before,” he added.