HELSINKI, Finland-Scandinavia has long been the most fertile and concentrated spawning ground for technology innovation in Europe. The torchbearers for this culture have been led by global names such as Nokia, Ericsson, Benefon and Europolitan.
In 1985, Nokia’s main claim to fame was as one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of toilet tissue and rubber boots. How times have changed. Such has been the chameleon character of technological innovation in Scandinavia for more than 200 years.
In the 1980s, this dynamic spearheaded Nordic Mobile Technology (NMT), the world’s first analog-based mobile telephone network. The advent of NMT revolutionized communications across Scandinavia and gave companies like Nokia and Ericsson significant and early edges in the industry.
Today, Scandinavia remains a hothouse for technology innovation and a place where new e-commerce and m-commerce concepts are tried and tested before being unleashed on larger global markets.
The Helsinki Transport Authority’s (HTA) new Helsinki Public Transport SMS Ticketing Service has classic hallmarks of a technology with global applications. The HTA has introduced the world’s first mobile ticket service for public transport, in collaboration with technology partners PlusDial MTSP and Add2Phone. All major mobile network operators in Finland, including Sonera, Telia and Radiolinja, have opened network access for the SMS ticket service.
The system allows commuters on Helsinki’s trams, buses and metro services to pay for tickets using SMS via their mobile phones. Positioned by a ticket machine, users dial a dedicated number and enter a four-digit code. Ticket machines respond by issuing a ticket, which is charged to the user’s mobile-phone bill.
Some new technology concepts are highly experimental and high risk. In Norway, Telenor has signed a deal with Denmark’s Egmont, one of Europe’s largest entertainment media groups, to develop mobile multimedia content, including cartoons. Analysts are questioning the validity of the alliance, and the commercial logic behind downloading massive amounts of data and the attached cost headaches for users.
Back in Finland, Nokia and Sonera have teamed up to conduct the world’s first wireless local area network (WLAN) roaming using existing GSM core network and roaming infrastructure. Sonera is offering its corporate customers broadband wireless Internet access based on Nokia’s 11 Megabits per second (Mbps) 802.11b WLAN technology.
Subscribers to the new system use a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card installed inside the WLAN card. This makes it possible to use the card anywhere in the world within the access zones provided by local GSM operators and provided the operators have WLAN roaming agreements.
“In the future, operator wireless LAN services will be an integral part of the mobile Internet service offering, providing the best possible data transmission capacity. Solutions based on SIM cards will, in the very near future, enable easy and secure access to services both in the user’s home country and abroad,” said Pasi Tolonen, Sonera’s vice president of mobile business services.
Nokia is also involved in another innovative pilot project, this time in collaboration with credit card corporation Visa International and Nordea, Scandinavia’s largest bank. The test ground is Helsinki, where consumers can perform Visa transactions using a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) phone equipped with two chips.
The second chip is issued by the bank and contains a Wireless Identity Module (WIM) application. The Electronic Mobile Payment Services (EMPS) project is the first real-life pilot project of its kind in the world, involving 150 users and two Finnish merchants, the Internet-based grocery store Ruoka.net and the movie theatre Kinopalatsi.
The dual-chip concept is compatible with the recently announced preferred payment architecture by the financial industry-driven Mobey Forum. In the pilot, WAP is used as a transport layer, and the wireless authentication and signature method is based on WAP and WIM specifications.
