Somewhat OT, but an interesting read on the Wireless Cellular Future; I can see a lot of SD cards being sold in that future.
July 13, 2000
Wireless Valhalla: Hints of the Cellular Future
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What Do You Call a Scandinavian All-Purpose Communication, Shopping and Entertainment Interface?
A Phone
By PETER H. LEWIS
HELSINKI, Finland -- It is time for the "S.M.S. Dating Game" on Radio X3M. Romance is in the
airwaves and Cupid carries a cell phone. Thumbs ready? In 160 characters or less, use the keypad on your
mobile phone to type a description of yourself and your interests, and send it to the disc jockey's phone
using the wildly popular Short Messaging Service.
In minutes, if your description catches the fancy of another mobile phone user -- and the odds are good,
considering that most Finns over age 15 carry a wireless phone -- the phone will chirp, warble, vibrate or
beep out a riff from a popular rock song, signaling that you have a text reply waiting on your phone.
"Apparently it's more fun than actually talking to the other person," said Richard Nordgren, head of
programming for Radio X3M.
But that is nothing compared with what is going on in Sweden, where a company is developing a mobile
Internet dating service that tracks the location of the phone. When two seemingly compatible people come
into range of each other, the dating service will alert them by phone, enabling them to arrange a
rendezvous.
Although it is indisputably the business leader in personal computer and Internet technologies, the United
States is Old World when it comes to what many analysts and entrepreneurs see as the next big wave of
technology: wireless Internet communications.
Market researchers are nearly unanimous in predicting that in three years more people around the world
will gain access to the Internet through mobile devices than through personal computers. But to preview
this transformation, which some call the "mobile lifestyle," one has to leave the United States.
"You're just starting to see it in the U.S., but here it is everywhere," said Rolf Skoglund, a venture
capitalist in Stockholm.
According to the market research company International Data Corporation, Sweden has passed the United
States and is now the world's dominant "information economy," measured in terms of the percentage of
citizens who have access to computers, the Internet, wireless phones and other information technologies.
Finland, Norway and Denmark round out the top five.
The Nordic countries are digital Valhalla, the forefront of the new information economy based on wireless
communications. As a result, American technology companies and venture capitalists are rushing to set
up or expand their offices in the growing high-tech centers near Helsinki and Stockholm. Microsoft
opened a new research and development office in Stockholm last month, as did Motorola.
"All of the best companies are being forced into setting up sites in Europe or Japan, where they have
working test beds to proceed with critical development," said Mark R. Anderson, a technology analyst
who recently returned from touring northern Europe. "There's a reason why all these people are rushing
over to Sweden. They have no choice. It could be that the wireless markets won't appear here in the United
States for years after the markets are mature in Sweden and in Japan and in China."
The Nordic countries are also in the vanguard of mobile electronic commerce, or m-commerce. Although
it is still a novelty, people in Finland are beginning to use their phones to pay for soft drinks from a
vending machine, for parking and for car washes. In Sweden, trials are under way to allow people to
check train schedules and to book and pay for tickets by phone. An advertisement in Stockholm shows a
shopkeeper asking, "Will that be cash or phone?"
In Finland, it is difficult to find any young people who have a friend or relative who does not have a
mobile phone. In fact, the question seemed to startle almost everyone, as if they had been asked whether
they had friends who rode reindeer. Finally, after pausing a moment to contemplate the question, one Finn
said: "Yes, my grandmother. But she is 83."
Such things are inevitable in a culture in which last year 78 percent of the country's 2.35 million
households had at least one mobile phone, according to Statistics Finland, a research company. About one
household in four no longer even has a traditional wired phone, relying entirely on mobile phones. The
report stated, "nearly all Finns aged between 15 and 39 used the mobile phone."
The mobile lifestyle is only slightly more subdued in Sweden. "Why would you be glued to a wall to talk
to someone?" asked Cyril Holm, a young entrepreneur in Stockholm who carried a phone with a built-in
keyboard. "What a terrible, stinking idea."
But why Scandinavia, and not the United States, which views itself as the center of the technology
revolution?
Several factors came together to make this the forefront of mobile telephones: an extremely high
penetration of wireless phones among consumers, estimated as high as 70 percent among people over 10
years of age; the aggressive growth of wireless system operators like Telia and Sonera; and the
headquarters of two of the biggest makers of mobile phones and equipment, Nokia in Finland and
Ericsson in Sweden.
Technology experts in Scandanavia offer several other explanations. Part of the answer is geography. The
Nordic countries are relatively large and remote, fostering the need for reliable communications. And
beginning in the 1980's, the Scandinavian countries agreed on a common mobile phone standard, which
evolved into G.S.M., or Global System for Mobile communications. The United States, meanwhile, uses
two incompatible standards, called T.D.M.A. and C.D.M.A. Some carriers in the United States use a
variant of G.S.M., but it uses a different frequency and is incompatible with the global standard, which
has been adopted by 105 countries.
On a practical level, it means that most Americans cannot use their phones overseas, while someone from
Estonia can call easily from London or Rome without needing a new phone.
Another impediment is the curious American billing system in which the recipient of a mobile call pays
the toll, which is just the opposite of the European standard. The effect is that many Americans keep their
phones turned off, unless they are expecting a call, and carry pagers instead. In Scandinavia, where the
caller pays, phones are left on all the time and thus are used more.
"I haven't seen a pager for years," said Antti Laaksonen, a young programmer who is working to develop
entertainment services for a new generation of cell phones. The last company in Finland to offer pagers
recently closed its service, succumbing to the S.M.S. phenomenon.
In the United States, there is no way to distinguish between a mobile phone number and a fixed line
number. They have the same number of digits. In Scandinavia, mobile numbers have an extra digit, so a
caller can tell at a glance whether the other's person's phone is in his pocket or on his desk.
But more than all this, it appears that the idea of mobility has caught fire here in digital Valhalla in a way
that even the highly mobile American society has not grasped.
The use of phones for nonverbal communication is one of the more striking differences between Europe
and the United States. Finland, with a population of about 5 million, sends 75 million S.M.S. messages a
month. S.M.S. allows people to send up to 160 characters of text to another phone, with the message
displayed on the phone's tiny screen.
It typically costs the equivalent of 15 cents to 20 cents to send a message and nothing to receive one,
unless you subscribe to one of the many S.M.S. services, like the joke of the day or a daily horoscope,
which are among the most popular services. Despite the cost, S.M.S. is a cultural phenomenon among
young people, who appear to possess an uncanny ability to type swiftly using their thumbs on the phone's
tiny keypad.
Of course, the phones can be set to vibrate silently instead of ring, which has led to a new problem: Some
schoolteachers have complained that students are using their phones to send test answers to one another in
class.
Esa Puokannen, a Finn who studied at the University of Texas, said that in his family only his 8-year-old
does not carry a phone. His 12-year-old son got a phone and ran up a tab of 400 markaa (more than $60)
the first month, sending S.M.S. messages to his friends. He has since been put on a prepaid card, and
once he exhausts his limit he can only receive messages, not send them.
The phones can be used to send simple pictures and musical compositions, and to play games. In Finland,
Nokia phones come with a game called Snake, which is so popular that there was recently a national
Snake championship. And the recreational use of the phones is not restricted to schoolchildren. In a
Helsinki bar, one Finn showed a lewd graphic on his phone that he said a friend had sent him.
A popular Finnish rock band recently released its new song not on CD or over the radio, but as a digital
download created especially for mobile phones. A radio station in Helsinki that used to play the Top 10
hits on Wednesday mornings now plays the Top 10 musical cell phone ring downloads.
And, by the way, the top cell phone ring last week in Finland was the theme song from "Batman." |
