Q&A. Risto Linturi
The first question: What is your vision?
The answer:
Helsinki Telephone Corporation is an operator that provides mobile, fixed and internet services. In addition, we create concepts for virtual cities. We actually envision all networks to be early stages of digital cities. Our Helsinki Arena 2000, also known as Virtual Helsinki, aims even higher than being a digital city. However, as you can see from the video in the background, our city is still empty. A lifeless city is far from our dream. We share and support Hewlett Packard's vision of E-Services, because this vision integrates smoothly into our vision. It enables our digital city to prosper with virtual life and real interaction between inhabitants.
I first came up with the idea of Virtual Helsinki because I was very disappointed with hierarchical systems where few decide what is good for the masses. I had to work hard to convince others that we need symmetrical and open networks where anyone, with the help of our resources, can set up their own broadcast stations, where anyone can create tailored service packages for their own and their customers' needs.
You might ask whether our virtual city and this empowerment of citizens is business. I first want to point out that it's more than business, it's life. And it is as much business as calling your mother with your mobile phone from where-ever you are. We need sophisticated networks which empower people to lead and shape their own lives as they wish, where they can create such services as they wish for themselves, their customers or friends. All this flexibility will be very bad for our business however without the best resource allocation method ever invented: everyone pays for what they use.
This is what I think E-Services is all about, and this is what E-speak technology enables us to do. We can achieve freedom to create mass tailored services when network resources can be allocated homogeneously, when users can be identified and charged for what they use, and when all resources are protected.
I am especially happy that E-speak allows us to build safer networks. All Finnish citizens will soon get their electronic identities. By the end of this year they can sign official documents and complete binding contracts over the net. Very much will be dependant of the net. I want to create virtual cities where people can move freely and without fear. Where they can trust that nobody can spy on them, or steal their resources, or send them blackmail letters without leaving any traces. Many problems that we face today will be solved by a sophisticated network which has good services and efficient, systematic resource allocation.
As we all know, Hewlett Packard is well respected for its corporate ethics. Those who create platforms need to be trustworthy. This is one of the reasons, besides the technological and commercial reasons, why we expect E-Speak to help us build a networked future and a platform where people are not mere objects of exploitation, but respected members of virtual society. Where people are allowed to contribute and add to the richness of virtual society and lead their lives in virtual cities as equal inhabitants, not as the bottom layer of a hierarchy, called end users or viewers.
Second question: What will you first do with E-Services?
We will first implement E-Services and E-speak in an area which is very close to my heart - education. In Finland, virtual universities and virtual schools are being set up. Helsinki Telephone Corporation offers Open Video Services, which is a system that enables training companies to organize virtual seminars in the net and collect payments from those who attend the virtual seminars and who access the material. We are creating the software in cooperation with our subsidiary Comptel. Comptel is world market leader in mediation devices and specialises here in providing usage and billing services to our pilot.
Some years ago I owned a training company which had twenty computerized classrooms. I sold the company. One reason was that I no longer believed that people should be gathered in one physical facility for the purpose of training - this fosters inequality and forces training sessions to be unnaturally long to be efficient. I envisioned that remote teaching and telepresence would be a key to future lifelong learning. Now that this vision is about to become true, I am very happy that I have had a role in making it happen.