IP: Finland (resent for clarity)

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

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"It's the most-connected country I've been in, hands down."


--David J. Farber, University of Pennsylvania




Finns thrive in a plugged-in world




Internet, wireless, cellular link citizens




Published: Sept. 8, 1996




BY DAN GILLMOR


Mercury News Computing Editor




ABOARD THE HELSINKI-TAMPERE TRAIN, Finland -- For about the fifth time in
an hour, a cellular phone chirped. It was Elina Vuorenp=E4=E4's this time.
She glanced away from her reading, flipped open the phone, pressed a
button to stop the ringing and returned to her book. She didn't feel like
taking the call at the moment, she said


later.




This wasn't a rail car full of executives. It was the tourist-class coach
car. And for Vuorenp=E4=E4, a student, the mobile phone was no luxury. It wa=
s
her phone -- her only phone -- and she carried it everywhere.




> From their homes to their businesses -- and even in railway coaches --
Finns are connected electronically, perhaps more so than any other people
in the world. They're plugging into one of the world's most advanced
telecommunications systems.




Consider:




   They're connected by phones, and increasingly via wireless services.
In Helsinki and other major cities, it's a reasonable bet that almost
every other person on the street is carrying a cell phone; there is
nearly one cell phone for every three Finns including babies and
great-grandparents, according to Finnish phone company estimates.




   They're on the Internet. Only Iceland, an Atlantic island nation with
a tiny population, has more Internet connections per capita than Finland,
which ranks far ahead of the United States in this measure, according to
Matrix Information and Directory Services Inc., an Austin, Texas-based
company that tracks Net trends.




   They're moving to adopt new media, using state-of-the-art public
telecommunications networks that can handle all varieties of data, such
as state-owned Telecom Finland Ltd.'s MediaNet, an Internet-based system
for distributing music, videos and other multimedia information.




   And, in recent years, Finland has produced some of the computing and
telecommunications worlds' best-respected innovators. They include Linus
Torvalds -- originator of the Linux operating system, which has gained a
global following -- and Telecom Finland's Juha Heinanen, known widely for
his work in advanced computer


networking.




''It's the most-connected country I've been in, hands down,'' said David
J. Farber, a telecommunications professor at the University of
Pennsylvania and one of the United States' top experts in the field.




Farber attributes Finland's wired status to a variety of factors,
including ''national pride, education -- very well-educated people who
want to stay in and build their country -- and support from industry and
government.'' He and other experts also cite the nation's spread-out
population and long, dark, cold winters as incentives that have made
Finland a pioneer in communications technology.




The connectivity of this Scandinavian country, with its relatively long
tradition of competition in communications markets offers a key lesson
for the United States and other nations as they move into a less
regulated era of telecommunications services. The United States also
could learn from Finland's and Scandinavia's early adoption of


high-quality wireless-communication standards, which lay the groundwork
for cellular-phone and data technology that only recently have become
available in the United States, and only in a few areas.




Fierce competition




The battle for market share here is fierce. State-owned Telecom Finland
Ltd. and Helsinki Telephone, an aggregation of local Finnish phone
companies that banded together, compete in all kinds of phone service.=20




''Finland has always had several (phone companies) and some degree of
competition between them,'' said Arto Karila, professor of computer
science at Helsinki University of Technology and a longtime guru in the
networking field. ''Since the mid-1980s, competition has been gradually
increased, and we now have the most competitive telecom market anywhere,
including competition in the local loop.''




The competition extends to data networking. Companies offer high-quality
Internet access, from low-speed home connections to one of the world's
best high-speed, publicly available data networks. And Scandinavia boasts
major telecommunications companies -- Ericsson in Sweden and Nokia Corp.
in Finland -- that have pushed technical and marketing boundaries.




Finnish telecommunications companies are ''years ahead ... when it comes
to experience in competition and deploying technology to provide services
for customer needs,'' Karila said.=20




They have to be, said Olli Martikainen, vice president of research and
development at Telecom Finland. ''Every year, customers demand more,'' he
said.




Most personal voice communications will be handled over wireless networks
before long, Martikainen said. In fact, he and others believe the number
of cellular phone numbers will outstrip the fixed-line numbers.




Efficient, convenient




Part of the allure is the cellular technology used widely throughout
Scandinavia and Europe, called GSM, which stands for Global System for
Mobile Communications. It's considerably more capable than the cellular
service most widely used in the United States, efficiently handling data
and voice. GSM is being adopted in the United States, in the form of PCS
(Personal Communications Service), which was launched last year in
Washington, D.C., and is spreading slowly to other cities.




In Finland, your cellular phone number follows you everywhere, a major
convenience. Add to that a reasonable price for service -- almost as
cheap as a fixed line (and only the person making the call is charged for
the air time) -- and it's easy to see why it appeals to people like
Vuorenp=E4=E4, whose phone was one of many that rang on the


train to Tampere.




Vuorenp=E4=E4, 28, splits her time between Helsinki, where she attends the
university, and her family's home in Tampere, about 125 miles north. A
cell phone was the only practical choice, she said. Most of her immediate
family has gotten with the program: Her father, brother and sister all
have their own cellular numbers. Only her mother


has chosen not to get one.=20




Nokia, of Helsinki, sells some of the world's most popular cell phones
and is pushing into new areas. It just unveiled the Nokia 9000
Communicator, a handheld device that combines a phone, display screen and
keyboard.




With the 9000, ''we are creating a new kind of behavior'' in personal
communications, said Kaj G. Linden, senior vice president for technology
at Nokia. ''We don't know what the "killer' applications will be.''




Internet-access provider EUnet Finland has already begun offering
connections via the Nokia 9000. The service, called EUnetTraveller,
provides international access to the Internet and e-mail in any country
that supports GSM technology.




While Finns have taken to cell phones in huge numbers, they still rank
slightly behind Norway and Sweden in per-capita usage, Linden said. Phone
companies are practically giving away phones in those countries, he
said.




But Finns lead the Scandinavian pack -- and every other nation except
Iceland -- when it comes to their adoption of the Internet. One reason is
education. A college education is almost standard. Martikainen of Telecom
Finland also noted that as is the trend in the United States, every
Finnish college student has had Internet access for years.




The competition in phone service has spilled over into the networking
arena, where Finland is an acknowledged world leader in deployment --
though Finns tend to buy their products from U.S. networking companies.




Telecom Finland and other competitors were among the earliest anywhere to
offer public data networks, and introduced many key networking
technologies well ahead of their adoption in other nations, Karila=20
said.




Today, Finnish companies have their pick of high-speed connections to the
Internet, allowing them to use networks built by Telecom Finland and
other telecommunications companies for moving around data without having
to build their own corporate ''wide-area'' networks. Telecom Finland says
it was the first company in the world to offer commercial service in
asynchronous transfer mode networking, a technology that handles voice,
video and other data on one line.




As in the United States, consumers are taking to the Internet in droves,
and for similar reasons.




''From home it's mostly entertainment,'' said Juha Wilkka, a graphical
designer in Nutmijarva, a Helsinki suburb. ''I'm anxious to play Internet
games.''




But Wilkka, who first used the Net only a year ago, also plans to bring
the technology more fully into his business, not just for e-mail but also
for transferring his company's files to commercial printers.




''The more you use it,'' he said, ''the more you want to use it.''








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