Telenor ASA

A telecommunications network serving 172 million subscribers across two continents demonstrates how mycelial architecture enables selective pruning. Telenor generated NOK 20.3 billion in Q2 2025 revenue, but the story is geographic divergence: Nordic operations drove 5.6% mobile service growth and 12.5% EBITDA expansion while Asian operations faced systematic contraction—Bangladesh declining amid market disruption, Pakistan preparing for regulatory-approved exit despite 17% EBITDA growth. The company's 2025 strategy mirrors fungal networks that maintain productive nodes while withdrawing from depleted substrate: acquiring GlobalConnect's Norwegian fiber customers (140,000 subscribers, NOK 6 billion) to capture 29% fiber market share while simultaneously engineering Asian divestment. With 11,500 employees and operations spanning Scandinavia to South Asia, Telenor raised Nordic EBITDA guidance to high single-digit growth, invests in fiber deployment achieving 6% CAGR, and surpassed 25 million IoT SIM deployments. The pattern reveals network biology at scale—not equal investment across all nodes, but strategic resource allocation to high-yield pathways, withdrawing from low-return connections while deepening infrastructure where network density compounds returns. Fiber and 5G adoption create structural moats in mature Nordic markets; Asia provided growth during expansion but now faces harvest or exit as regulatory and competitive conditions shift.