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Ep 142 – AT&T bets on the last mile (Shawn Hakl)
AT&T’s Shawn Hakl explains why the operator is betting on last-mile connectivity, and what an agent-consumable network actually looks like.
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Ep 143 – Norlys bets big on Telia (Daniel Askeroth)
This week’s guest
Daniel Askeroth
Senior Vice President, Telco NorlysTelcos love mergers. In 2025 alone, the industry spent nearly $70 billion on M&A, and every single deal brought its own baggage. New systems, new cultures, new tech debt—all bolted onto everything that came before. Everyone celebrates the deal. No one celebrates the hard work of bringing two organizations together.
For this episode, I sit down with Daniel Askeroth, senior vice president of telco at Norlys, the Danish energy and broadband co-op that acquired Telia Denmark in 2024. Daniel spent 17 years at Telia Denmark. Now, he’s the one tasked with stitching his old company into Norlys, which is itself the product of 40+ prior mergers. We dig into how he runs the integration without breaking the customer experience, how to unite workforces without losing the people you need most, and what Daniel would do differently if he had to do it all over again.
Listen now to hear:
- Why the people side of mergers takes longer than anyone expects [03:20];
- How Norlys keeps integration invisible to customers [05:08];
- How AI is changing the way Daniel’s teams build [06:48]; and
- What Daniel learned from temporarily stepping into an HR role [11:58].
Links and resources
- Read Bain’s Telecom M&A: Here Are the Latest Deal Trends Worldwide for the latest on where the industry is placing its bets.
- Learn more about Norlys’s $926M acquisition of Telia Denmark and why adding mobile was the missing piece in its full-service play for Danish consumers.
- Check out Daniel’s LinkedIn post about the Norlys leadership role-swap. He traded his telco seat for one in People & Culture for a few days and came back with a different perspective on the business.
- Every merger means bringing together new billing stacks, CRMs, and decades of past decisions. Learn how the Totogi Ontology sits over all those acquired systems so they speak the same language.
- Want to see the Totogi Ontology in action? Catch Team Totogi at DTW Ignite, running June 23-25 in Copenhagen.
- Daniel’s kids discovered historical architecture through Pokémon GO, a location-based mobile game that uses your phone’s GPS and camera to catch virtual Pokémon at real-world landmarks. Launched in 2016, it peaked at 232 million players and still draws 55 million monthly players and $545M in annual revenue—accidentally tricking a generation into exploring historic landmarks. Who knew Pokémon GO was still going so strong?
- Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
- You can find the episode transcript here.
Wanna talk AI and public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.
Guest bio
Daniel Askeroth is senior vice president of telco at Norlys, a Danish energy and telecoms cooperative. He leads Norlys’ telecom business following the acquisition of Telia Denmark, including the integration and transformation focusing on simplifying systems, aligning cultures, and driving large-scale technology and organizational change.
With over 17 years of experience at Telia Denmark prior to joining Norlys, Daniel brings deep expertise in telecom operations, transformation, and leadership. He is passionate about building strong teams and delivering customer-focused, future-ready connectivity solutions.
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Podcast credits
- Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Rios, TelcoDR
- Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
- Senior Editor/Brand Manager: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
- Audio Editor: Andrew Condell
- Supervising Producer: Amanda Avery
- Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
- Music: Dyami Wilson
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why did Norlys acquire Telia Denmark?
Norlys is a Danish energy and broadband co-op owned by its customers. Mobile was the missing piece in its digital infrastructure play for Danish consumers. By acquiring Telia Denmark in 2024 for $926M, Norlys completed the full-service picture—energy, broadband, and mobile—delivering on its promise to bring value back to its owners.
2. What makes the Norlys integration especially complex?
Norlys isn’t just merging with Telia Denmark—it’s already the product of more than 40 prior mergers. Each brought along its own billing stack, CRM, and provisioning system. The Telia Denmark integration challenge is stitching Telia’s systems into Norlys without disrupting customers or paralyzing the organization. As Daniel Askeroth explains, changing networks and IT simultaneously creates too many failure points, so sequencing matters.
3. What’s would Daniel Askeroth would do differently today?
Daniel Askeroth says to never underestimate the people side. It takes longer than anyone expects to align teams around shared goals, remove uncertainty, and help people find their identity in the new organization. He also cautions against underestimating tasks that seem straightforward, like connectivity, because multiple systems and processes always make things harder than they look.
4. How is Norlys approaching AI in its integration work?
Norlys is using AI in a mix of ways—including for discovery work like mapping how systems connect—but Daniel acknowledges there’s room to do more. Accountability for critical infrastructure decisions is a key consideration. He’s seen the same dynamic DR describes: initial resistance from engineers has given way to genuine adoption as AI coding capabilities have meaningfully improved.
5. What did Danielle Rios take away from the Norlys story?
DR connected Norlys’ integration challenges to a problem every telco faces: decades of acquired systems slowing down every new product, AI initiative, and customer experience improvement. The Totogi Ontology is built for exactly this. It sits as a unified business layer over all those legacy systems so they speak the same language, letting telcos turn off old systems and move faster without disrupting customers.
6. What did Daniel Askeroth learn from stepping into a People & Culture role for a few days?
Daniel did a leadership role-swap at Norlys—trading his telco seat for time in HR—and came back with a sharper understanding of what drives people across very different functions. Engineers and HR professionals are motivated by the same things: culture, relationships, and understanding their role. He strongly recommends leaders spend time in other parts of the business to see different sides of the same challenges.