Mato Valtonen in nytimes
Gunnar
July 27, 1999
Rush Is On in Europe for Wireless Data
Services
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
HELSINKI, Finland -- After 24 years as lead singer for
the Leningrad
Cowboys, Finland's most popular home-grown rock band,
Mato
Valtonen figured it was time for something new.
Noticing that Finnish teenagers
were perpetually tapping out
messages on their cellular
phones, Valtonen set up a
business last year that transmits
jokes and horoscopes for about
30 cents apiece. He was soon
drawing thousands of requests a
day so he added a half-dozen
other quirky services, including a
dictionary that translates words
into 10 different languages and
wireless chat rooms that
attracted about 7,000 visitors on
a recent Friday night.
In the next few months, he plans
to start what amounts to a wireless Internet site, using a new
class of
phones that have highly simplified Web browsers. Based on a
slimmed-down, text-only Web format, the site will offer bus
schedules,
restaurant listings, stores and games. If all goes as he
hopes, people will
eventually make restaurant reservations and hair appointments
-- and pay
his company, Wapit Ltd., a few pennies every time they do it.
"We just think up ideas and see whether they catch on,"
Valtonen said.
"But I'm convinced that companies will see this as an
important
opportunity."
Improbable as it may seem, Valtonen is part of a very serious
rush across
Europe into wireless data services that is keeping the
Continent, along with
Japan, well ahead of the slower-moving United States.
Teenagers in Italy
already use their cell phones to tap out millions of short
messages every
day. Germany's top-selling tabloid, Bild, offers scores of
news and sports
bulletins through short messages. Here in Finland, it is
possible to tap out
an order for a taxi or a take-out pizza.
And now, with the impending start of wireless
Web transmission, European cellular carriers are
gearing up for a huge increase in the speed and
ease of transmitting wireless data. As a result,
the gap could widen further.
Indeed, history may be repeating itself. In the
early 1990s, European wireless companies jumped ahead of their
American counterparts by adopting a single technical standard
for digital
cellular. As a result, digital phones with built-in paging and
message
functions arrived years earlier in Europe than in the United
States. They
also worked anywhere in Europe, long before American phones
worked
throughout the United States.
"Europe has always been about one or two years ahead of the
United
States in wireless technology, and they still are," said
Herschel Shostek, an
industry analyst in Wheaton, Md.
Beginning this fall, cellular phone carriers from Scandinavia
through
Germany and down to Italy plan to start the text-only wireless
Web sites
for mobile phones. And next year, most European carriers plan
to offer a
technology called general packet radio service, or GPRS, which
will allow
people with newly equipped wireless phones to transmit data
fast enough
to browse the Internet in full color.
Beyond offering speed, the new service is designed to let
customers stay
connected all day long. Many companies plan to charge only for
the data
customers send or receive instead of for each minute they are
connected.
European governments are also setting the stage for even
faster, "third
generation" wireless networks. Most plan to hand out or
auction off new
radio licenses for so-called wideband networks that will be
able to carry
videoconferences.
Finland, where wireless phones now outnumber traditional ones,
has
already issued its new licenses; Germany, Britain and other
European
countries plan to do so next year.
No one, however, is quite sure what kinds of features
customers will
actually want.
And the third-generation systems will not be ready in Europe
for at least
two years, slightly behind Japan's timetable.
U.S. carriers are pushing wireless data as well. But
Americans, who first
got digital phones only a few years ago, have barely begun to
use them for
two-way data transfer and messaging.
Just as the absence of a common standard delayed the ability
of
Americans to use their phones anywhere in the country, it is
slowing down
the rollout of more-advanced services. AT&T and other wireless
carriers
are pushing a third-generation technology called EDGE. Other
big players,
including Sprint and Bell Atlantic, are pushing a rival
approach called
wideband CDMA, or code division multiple access.
The conflicting standards "have slowed things down
considerably," said
Mark Lowenstein, an analyst at the Yankee Group, a research
firm in
Boston.
"A lot of the technology is coming out of Silicon Valley, but
in terms of
actually using it, the early adopters are in Europe,"
Lowenstein said. "They
have a much bigger base of digital users, they have one
harmonious
technology and particular countries are doing more to market
new
services."
The United States also faces a more difficult chore in getting
from here to
there. The American carriers do not have a middle-term
technology
comparable to GPRS in Europe, and the third-generation
services are not
expected to reach the market for a few years. Moreover, the
Federal
Communications Commission is insisting that carriers use
existing radio
frequencies, which are likely to become overloaded if
customers transmit
video and graphics on top of voice conversations.
Paradoxically, much of the inspiration for new wireless data
services
comes straight from the United States. Yahoo Inc. is setting
up wireless
Internet gateways in Germany. Phone.com, a small California
company,
developed the simplified browsers and servers -- known as
wireless access
protocol, or WAP -- that European wireless carriers are now
embracing.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft Corp. is locked in a fierce
competition with a
European consortium called Symbian over establishing a global
standard
for personal digital assistants -- hand-held devices -- that
would use these
wireless networks.
Most of the big cell phone manufacturers are rolling out
Web-ready phones
designed for GSM, or global system for mobile communication,
the
dominant second-generation wireless standard in Europe. Nokia
of Finland,
which will probably be first to the market, plans to start
selling its version in
August. The Nokia phone is about the same size as an ordinary
cell phone.
It offers no graphics or pictures, but it has a small screen
to display text.
In Germany, Mannesmann AG, the country's largest mobile phone
operator, has signed contracts with the main television
networks to deliver
news, sports and weather over a wireless network.
Handelsblatt,
Germany's biggest financial newspaper, will provide business
news and
stock-market information. Customers will also be able to
reserve airline
tickets with Lufthansa and train seats with Deutsche Bahn, the
national
railway.
"We are not interested in niche markets," said Dirk
Wierzbitzki, director of
product marketing at Mannesmann's mobile telephone unit in
Dusseldorf.
"We see this as a mass-market business."
An exuberant talker who sprinkles his sentences with American
phrases
like "killer app" and "Internet value chain," Wierzbitzki has
reason to be
bullish. Mannesmann customers already tap out 100 million
messages a
month, and the volume is climbing 20 percent a month.
"Europe is definitely ahead" in the use of cell phones as an
interactive
device, said Fabiola Arredondo, managing director for Yahoo
Europe,
which recently teamed up with Mannesmann.
For Wierzbitzki, the next big shift will come with the start
of GPRS next
year.
The service, which will require new handsets, has a
theoretical top speed
of about 114,000 bits of data per second. Since the airwaves
will inevitably
be bogged down by congestion, the real speeds may be
significantly
slower. Even so, they would be far higher than those of
Europe's current
cell phones, which have a top speed of 9,600 bits per second
-- the top
speed of most American cell phones, too.
But perhaps more important is the way it will work. The system
is
designed to charge customers based on the amount of data
transmitted
rather than by the minute. That can be a major change from
customers
who can pay, say, $1 a minute during business hours.
"Always connected, always on line -- that's our vision,"
Wierzbitzki said.
Though Mannesmann has not yet announced a pricing plan,
Wierzbitzki
envisions deals along the lines of 10 megabytes for about $10.
For an
ordinary consumer using the wireless Web format, that would
amount to
almost unlimited browsing and e-mail for a month.
But that is not the only point of these systems. The idea is
sell "mobility
services" -- traffic and shopping information, banking,
full-time access to
e-mail. "You need to forget about traditional Web surfing,"
said Ilkka
Raiskinen, vice president for business development at Nokia
Mobile
Phones. "If you're walking around Helsinki, you don't want to
browse the
Web. You want to know where a restaurant is, where you can buy
clothes
and how do you get there."
Mannesmann already has a separate subsidiary, Autocom, that
provides
navigation aids through wireless networks. Executives are now
looking at
services that would warn drivers about traffic jams and
recommend other
routes, as well as automatic SOS buttons that would call for
help if an
accident occurs.
"There is a huge pent-up demand for data over wireless phones,
but the
barriers have always been reliability, speed and cost," said
Anders Thulin, a
consultant at McKinsey & Company in Stockholm. "All those
barriers are
reduced now."
Even the most enthusiastic wireless bulls caution that the
third generation
networks to deliver all this stuff fast and efficiently are
still several years
away. Though carriers have agreed on the design of the system,
the
advanced technology is by no means ready for prime time.
Still, Raiskinen of Nokia predicted that at least 10 percent
of wireless
phones will be Internet-ready by the end of next year. He
cautioned that
speed itself will not usher in overnight change.
"The success will be based more on content," he said. "It's
not a revolution.
This is very much about evolution."
Jari Lehtinen
> HELSINKI, Finland -- After 24 years as lead singer for the Leningrad
> Cowboys, Finland's most popular home-grown rock band,
> Mato Valtonen figured it was time for something new.
24 years in Leningrad Cowboys? :-) <chuckles>
Previously he has always been very careful to point out that
Sleepy Sleepers and Leningrad Cowboys were two very different
bands with different agenda and audience.
The old Sleepy Sleepers band members maybe feel themselves
flattered when they will hear this.
Tekno-Kekko
Lahti
Jari Lehtinen
>Or maybe this thread should simply be titled, "Worm Valtonen Sells Out?"
>Attention All Foreigners In Finland: GO HOME!
Actually, Sleepy Sleepers sung in their parody protest song:
"Yankees go home from America! Nyaaaah!"
Sleepers' anti-establishmentary, anti-good-taste records were
all banned in Finnish Radio in the end of 1970's. That's why
they all sold gold.
Tekno-Kekko
Lahti
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