Nokia believed that it was alone at Telecom ’95 in promoting cellular data and demonstrating Internet Protocol (IP)-based technology. Olli Oittinen said that while it was not pushing IP with the same intensity as today, it was talking about the technology, together with how General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) might fit into this scenario.
He contended that there are surprisingly familiar themes between what Nokia was saying at Telecom ’95 and the current situation.
“The only difference then was we felt a bit lonely being the only one trying to create a market on our own,” he added.
He also admits that short message service (SMS) was seen in 1995 as hard to use and difficult to interest subscribers in using it. “The user interface was clumsy, and we have never understood the full potential of mobile-originated (MO) SMS as a potential source of revenue for operators. However, where you have 30 percent or higher penetration, there has been a tremendous growth in MO SMS traffic over the last 18 months,” he said.
“In some cases, the networks have collapsed due to SMS traffic overload. In Finland, the telecoms operator Sonera has reported that while its cellular business accounts for around 50 percent of its business, of this number 7 percent is attributed to SMS traffic. That’s a lot of money.”
Since Telecom ’95, Nokia has sharpened its focus within mobile communications to the exclusion of DECT and paging. Oittinen maintained that, while Nokia did develop a DECT product, it concluded the technology was too expensive and the market potential too limited. The same fate befell Nokia’s pagers, having been dropped about three years ago with the view that there was no future in the technology and that messaging via cellular would provide far greater functionality.-Paul Rasmussen in Oxford, United Kingdom
