Assessing Finland's Wireless Valley: can the pioneering continue?
Internationally, the success of Finland's Wireless Valley, i.e., the Finnish telecom/mobile cluster, has often been credited to Finnish industry competitiveness, population dispersion, and pro-technology attitudes. Yet, the number of competitors has been low, while demographic dispersion and technology attitudes have not been that different from those in other Nordic countries. In effect, the cluster performance during the second-generation rivalry has been a function of geopolitics (Finland's special relationship with Tsarist Russia and Soviet Union), public strategies (Nordic cooperation, EU strategies and Finnish liberalization in the 1970s and 1980s), and first-mover advantages (firm-level strategies of Finnish mobile vendors and operators). In the emerging 3G competition, the importance of geopolitics and public strategies has become secondary to that of the marketplace. As a result, the Finnish success drivers are dissipating in the new environment.
telecom innovation mobile communication internet development