Telcos 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.

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This week’s guest:

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.

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