"We are privileged to live in an exciting era, in which GSM is changing the world," said Finnish telecommunications company Nokia vice-president Petri Poyhonen, at the weekend. He was speaking at a press conference at the CeBIT '98 exhibition in Hannover, Germany, before a room thronged by dozens of journalists who hung on his every word. Say GSM to them, and you're a magician.
The exhibitors and visitors at CeBIT divide into two main groups: those who talk about GSM, and those who talk with GSM. The manufacturers displayed the last word in GSM infrastructure; all the equipment that goes with GSM; and, sexiest of all, the telephones of the future.
Here in Hannover, the future is not far away. All the new products went into circulation in the last month or two, or will come onto the market over the next six months. September 1998 - that's the distant future.
Iridium's Global Village
If all goes according to plan, September 1998 will also see the launch of the Iridium satellite cellular network. With this, a new era will open up for cellular telecommunications, and telecommunications in general, and the hackneyed expression "Global Village", which, up to now, was mainly a way of indicating trends and directions, will become a reality. And Iridium, of course, is GSM.
September is also the estimated launch month for the Partner network, Israel's third cellular operator, which will place us in a different cellular age from what we have experienced so far; the GSM age.
The current CeBIT exhibition establishes one fact beyond doubt: the telephones that work with GSM technology will reach Israel with integrated capability for transmitting fax and data, surfing the Internet, e-mail, paging, data processing, infra-red connection to a computer, a dual-mode feature enabling them to work with all kinds of GSM network, and a talking and standby capacity that renders the charger almost superfluous.
There is a broad range to chose from. There are the telephones of the large well-known companies like Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, Panasonic, Sony; and there are dozens of smaller manufacturers that produce this software and communications package known as a cellular telephone.
Dozens of Israeli dealers are pursuing these dozens of companies at CeBIT, trying to reach agreements. They too wish to join the select band selling GSM telephony in Israel to the hundreds of thousands of subscribers who - so Partner hopes - will join the third cellular operator's network.
Nokia's Mobile Office
Without detracting from any of the developments from the cellular telephone makers, every CeBIT, Nokia takes the lead. Two years ago, the company did so with the Nokia Communicator 9000, a telephone-computer that opens up along its entire length to reveal the keyboard and screen of a miniature laptop.
This year, Nokia unveiled the second generation of the Communicator, Nokia 9110, which seems almost perfect. It is smaller, much lighter (it will fit into a jacket pocket, not just an overcoat pocket), illuminated at night, with an attractive, aerodynamic looking design, and it enables high speed data communications and Internet surfing.
The communicator, and products like it, are not just products. This is a way of life. It is, in fact, a mobile office, multimedia-rich, offering voice communications, data communications, fax communications, push information in real time, and conference calls. Next year, the GSM telephones will include features such as voice dialling, super-fast Internet at speeds measured in megabits rather than kilobits, the ability to use different features at different tariffs, information services, commercial transactions, and unifield messaging - the subscriber can receive e-mail, and also receive, on the Inbox screen, voice and fax messages.
The Nokia 9110 will come on the market in September 1998. The price is not yet known. The previous generation, the Nokia 9000, started life eighteen months ago at a price of $2,000, but in many places has now gone down to the $700-800 region.
Another GSM phenomenon seen at CeBIT this year has been miniature telephones. They are so tiny that they have no visible numbers. Both Nokia and Siemens displayed working examples of these products, though they are not yet commercially available. Siemens explained that research had shown that 85% of cellular telephone use is by means of the internal telephone directory, or by returning a call. In both cases, the destination number is on the screen and can be dialled. Therefore, Siemens decided it was worth producing a small telephone with a large screen, and making it compatible with all the GSM applications. Those 15% who insist on tapping out numbers can move the cover downwards to reveal the number pad. The product, called Siemens SL10, has a cute design, and took the CeBIT cellular telephone design award this year.
Are Pele-Phone and Cellcom Driving us to Partner?
If one may speculate, Siemens' telephones can expect success in Israel, if only because of the fact that some of them have colour and graphic screens, which will capture the heart of the Israeli lover of communications toys. There is not a single Israeli exhibitor or visitor at CeBIT (and there are more than a thousand of them) not going around with a GSM cellular telephone. Some of them, particularly employees of the large companies that frequently send staff and managers on business trips to Europe, have telephones permanently on hire in various European countries, principally Britain. Other hire telephones ad-hoc for each trip from one of the many companies in Israel offering such a service, while yet others have begun to take advantage of the service now offered by Pele-Phone and Cellcom.
Gradually, try-out is turning into habit, and at Partner, they can only look on and rub their hands. They will harvest the fruits. There are those who say that Cellcom and Pele-Phone's new service, which offers subscribers the possibility of a permanent GSM number, plays more into Partner's hands than into their own. They are making more and more people accustomed to enjoying the benefits of GSM services - which still offer more than Pele-Phone and Cellcom - and turning this into a habit. When the Partner network starts operating and takes on subscribers, the natural tendency of these GSM addicts will be to go for the real thing. There is no doubt that Cellcom's Oren Most and Pele-Phone's Benny Einhorn face a considerable marketing problem.
Published by Israel's Business Arena March 23, 1998