In the southern Swedish town of Karlskrona, Mats Ljunggren and Ulf Johansson founded a mobile-phone company a decade ago called Europolitan. Today Europolitan, which caters specifically to business customers, has 846,000 subscribers and the highest average revenue per subscriber of any cell phone company in Europe. But what really makes Ljunggren and Johansson's company stand out is its pioneering development of the wireless office. This is exactly what it sounds like. Instead, everyone has a mobile.
Europolitan customers say that indeed it is, and the freedom from fixed lines has been liberating.
Bull, the French information systems company, became a Europolitan wireless office client when it redesigned its Stockholm office two years ago. With half the work force in the field as technicians, consultants, or sales reps, Bull jettisoned all of its fixed-line phones, except for a few to be used for conference calls and by visitors. Workers can connect with one another's mobile phones using their old internal phone numbers. When outsiders call Bull employees at their fixed phone number, the incoming call routes directly to the employee's mobile. At Postnet, the Swedish postal service's Internet subsidiary, wirelessness is not just a technical advance but part of the culture.