RESHAPING AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
Camden, Maine 24.10.1997
Risto Linturi
First of all I must thank You all for this fabulous conference. I have arranged thousands myself but nothing like this. I was making money - this kind takes too much time and effort. Especially I want to thank all who were responsible for my coming here and Mr and Mrs Tierney that they are so kind to let me stay in their home. You are so nice friendly and polite - and now I must be impolite on the issues that I address. I am sorry.
You don't get what You deserve - You don't even get what money can buy. You get just those things that teleoperators believe You deserve. I was very dissappointed when Ray Smith who seems to be extremely nice man and enviably competent in diverse fields of life - when he was promoting ADSL and not the symetrical alternatives.
These are not so much enabling technologies - these provide in their nature according to all the research that we have done - these provide for us much of the same limited TV-like culture that George Gilder was talking about. The bandwidth from home to other homes is not enough for everybody to start producing their own content.
It requires very special attention of the teleoperator to set up a media democratic network. I talk to You about this because it means a lot to us in Finland what You do here. If Your Bell companies decide to buy millions of ADSL devices instead of the symmetrical HDSL and VDSL-devices it will affect our prices. Our market is so small that we end up paying much more for our media democracy that otherwise.
We have now over 2 million cellular phones for five million inhabitants. Most of them digital and we keep them always open because receiver does not pay. We have working standards, very real and even competition and lowest prices anyplace.
We have the highest internet-penetration - there are now 800.000 weekly internet users from our five million population.
Let me now show You what technology makes possible and what we have decided to do about It. We have now fully digital telephone network and it costs You 100 dollars to get ISDN-service instaled. Then the cost of telephony is the same - Europes cheapest - as the plain old telephone. We do not subsidise local calls as You do. And we get the more money the more people like our service and the more they call. In USA it is opposite - this distorts Your market.
->video telephony-demo
This is the quality of video call over ISDN. Cheapest add on equipment to Your home PC costs about one hundred dollars and the software is standardised so that both Internet, ethernet and ISDN-based videocalls can interoperate. Even Microsoft is following this standard and naturally they distribute their software for free so that all of us benefit who do not wish to argue with them.
Oh, by the way I seem to be the only one really using Internet here. And Yes - I did bring it with me - this comes from a server in my laptop and simulates the speeds in our network.
Next I would like to point out a very important message. New PC:s start to be powerful enough to receive TV-quality bitstreams with free sotware from You guess who. With these new digital technologies it is possible to send TV-quality over telephone lines from media companies to You and in Finland it will also be possible to send TV-quality programs from home to other homes because we want to build these things symmetrical - I believe in enabling technologies and freedom and wisdom of most people that we will learn to use these things properly.
->Multimedia Network TV-quality demonstration
Today You need to buy a digital video camera worth 2 thousand dollars and another two thousand dollars worth of compression hardware and then You are all set to have Your own TV-station If only the operator will let You.
You can show other people Your kids birthday. You can show how to change the carbonator in Your car. You can set the camera in front of Your aqarium - and certainly it will be better than most other programs You get from television.
Incidentally - If You get more than ten people watching - we might pay You because You got us so many customers. Usually we have only one person listening while the other talks.
In 2005 we expect that 50% of homes in Helsinki will have video telephony and they all are potential tv-stations. We expect to have several thousand stations transmitting quality video regularly. These will be churches, theatre clubs, freelance musicians, teachers, dog shows or karaoke bars.
This does not come by itself. We have to be determined to invest millions, perhaps hundreds of millions to our networks - like we have done to the old networks. We also have to design and provide this so that each signal can be multicast to as many others as want to watch. This is possible if the networks are designed carefully to allow media democracy. Top down comes byt itself - this requires effort and determination and it seems to require travelling abroad to convince others to join the crusade. But this is possible and we will do this in Helsinki.
We have decided to change our basic telephone network into a multipurpose broadband network. Bob Metcalfe wrote in one of his exellent columns which are published also in Finland that teleoperators should stop integrating voice and data and picture together. If I understood his meaning correctly - we are following his advice. We are turning our basic network into a great switched ethernet or virtual ethernet using DSL, switched ATM and other new technologies.
This network transfers bits with internet protocols. You can use it for voice or video but You can also connect other things to it.
I am just building a new house. I got my light bulbs and even water taps connected to house automation network. This is connected to Windows NT server (provided by Microsoft) which in its turn is connected to internet. Now I can open my Nokia 9000 mobile communicator and check wether I left lights on or water running - this sounds stupid - It just happened as a by product and now I have a security problem. I need a firewall to stop hackers turning my lights on and off. But my frizge I really want to connect to internet.It will have a small web camera inside and then when shopping I can look with my 9000 Communicator if I need more milk home or not. And Yes - my dog is already in internet.
We have a large consortium with the City and various others including IBM, all local universities, Nokia, largest bank, newspaper, cable tv-company to build service infrastructure. But we expect that tens of thousands of people will start doing their part to supply content and communication services to this second level of internet.
We do not believe that distance has lost its meaning. You can send text and even voice cheaply over long distances. But I have a two megabit or T1 level connection to my home and within three years it will be possible for everybody in Helsinki. This connection would cost me hundreds of times more per minute over atlantic than just inside Helsinki. Highest quality and lowest price can only be achieved locally.
We believe that physical communities will have increasinly important meaning in the networks of tomorrow. We are creating a face - an user interface to our network that supports this. What You now sill see is our first trial. It runs smoothly in fastest
PC: of today. You can navigate where-ever You like. You can watch the buses go in real time. You can go to Your friend door and push the doorbell and we connect a telephone or videophone call for You or open her homepage or You can look at her fridge if she lets You. Possibilities of this kind of living maps are endless.
Internet has standards for this. PC:s are ready for this and in Finland there is a company that has developed tools for this for the past eight Years. Modelling all of Helsinki including suburbs so that all 500.000 citizens feel that they belong to this network costs about 2 million dollars which is only 20 % of what it costs to print our telephone catalog every year.
We do expect that tecnology develops so fast that we can provide all this with the
average cost of a local busfare per day. For us this would still mean very big increase in turnover and profits. And for our society as whole I expect this will mean even more.
Now as a last thing I would like to read a short greeting from the Lord Mayor of Helsinki to all atendees of this fabulous conference. Lord Mayor Eva-Riitta Siitonen is the only lady among the Mayors of European Union capitals.
->Virtual (3D) City -demonstration