Growth in mobile communication has been fast. No other technology, whether it's the pace of television adoption, or the VCR has experienced such a fast growth compared to the penetration of mobile phones globally. By the end of 2007 - there will be more than 3 billion people using a mobile phone all over the world – (there will be 3 billion mobile subscriptions by the end of 2007). 3 billion - that's quite a landmark for any technology.

In 2001, I joined Nokia in its new Insight and Foresight unit, primarily looking into the future of global developments and how they would impact our business environment. At Nokia, we wanted to look beyond the current business focus of 5 to 7 years. In my work, I focused on the socio-economic issues. Recently I have been involved e.g. in an economic study on the beneficial impact of mobile phones in Africa, where increased social mobility was one of the main issues. Looking at the mobile phone as a device that enables people to access information, to share that information, or to simply give them the opportunity to make their first telephone call. The same device is also enabling them to become entrepreneurs: to advertise for their own services, to actually increase their wealth and thus to increase their actual well-being.

On the environmental effects, there is a divergence of opinions, whether information and communication technologies (ICT) have had an impact or not. In our understanding these technologies have had an impact, backed for example by the findings of the African study. It shows that when people actually have access to their first communication device, they are able to spare time and resources from unnecessary travel from one village to another.

I want to emphasize the deep social and economic impacts of ICT and mobile communications technology, for example the community involvement aspect of ICT. The OECD just recently ran a study trying to understand the impact on economic growth by community involvement enabled by ICT. A hot topic in the era of “prosumerism”, personal virtual content and booming Internet-based communities. It has been a difficult analysis process as economic growth is usually understood resulting in hard figures. In respect to the impact of community involvement on economic development, it is difficult to come out with hard figures, and making direct comparison between countries a challenging task. At Nokia we are currently involved in research to understand the above kind of soft issues, and how these issues could be studied and what are their evident and potential benefits - for it is important for us to understand, what the future market will be.

For communication as we know it today is changing. People are increasingly using electronic communications to access information, to share information (much more actually sharing today than simply accessing basic information) or to modify that information for their personal communications, also for their personal economic gain. For example, we should be aware of what people are doing with blogs – as these “virtual diaries” are gaining rapidly more momentum among all kind of users, whether young or old.

As the role of electronic media is becoming ever larger people, its forms are also changing; the traditional electronic mediums such as the TV and radio are increasingly making way for the Internet. Many people are spending more time in virtual environments than consuming the traditional media. This is a reality, not only for the technology savvy kids and for the traveling business executives, but it also including people from all age groups, income groups, all parts and segments of the society, both in developed and developing societies. Of course, the ways people are using this revolution in communications vary, but in general sense, the changing of global communication patterns is already changing the world as we know it much to the way earlier historical revolutions in politics or technology – the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

In 2005, I participated in a discussion with Nicolas Negroponte about his idea for a $100 laptop; the very same device is now becoming a market reality. We discussed how useful it would be for different educational purposes and I agreed: it will be a great device for certain environments and types of situations. But a much higher number of people are already using mobile devices to access information and to communicate, even accessing the Internet for the first time. A comparison between the usage of computers and the mobile phone finds that mobiles will be readily used for more varied applications than just voice and voice-based services. This is part of digital convergence, whether it's devices of whether it's services, or whether it's the infrastructure in itself. We could use the $100 laptops and mobile phones to develop the new skills, whether it's e-learning or m-learning by innovative learning programs and applications enabling people with very low level of ICT skills to learn new skills and to utilize them for a better life.

There is a convergence of different industries, different technologies, different ways of accessing information and sharing that information. It depends on how we actually manage to produce a device, to produce a service and new ways to communicate which are truly seamless and interoperable throughout these different technologies. We are making these technologies simpler and easier for people to use. When discussing wider social inclusion of technologies within the European community, we're still some way from a situation in which all European citizens are able to use a single type of device, a converged terminal, a converged device to access all information and kinds of services.

That is where the industry is going. There will be a number of various devices; I am not saying that we are getting rid of televisions, and other devices. But those devices are increasingly going to work in the near future in a more and more coherent fashion. An analyst once said that the industry was talking about digital convergence in 2000, and already in the early 1990's, and I have found articles about digital convergence ranging back to the 1970's and 1960's. However, what is making the difference this time is not only the fact that the technologies are becoming more and more mature, it's also the fact that the businesses, the industries understand how to make everything work in a converging fashion. But most of all, it's the fact that the people using these devices, whether young or old, are more familiar with the services and technologies.

Symposium "Information Technology, Competitiveness and the Environment" in Helsinki, November 20, 2006
Website Management and Contact:
European Support Centre of the Club of Rome
http://esc.clubofrome.org