Radiolinja was a Finnish
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...
operator founded on September 19, 1988. On March 27, 1991, the world's first
GSM
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...
phone call was made on Radiolinja's network.
The network was opened for commercial use on July 1, 1991.
Radiolinja's slogan was ''So that Finns could talk more''; it became famous through an advertising campaign.
When Radiolinja launched, Finland's incumbent mobile operator, Telecom Finland (later changed to Sonera, now part of Sweden's
TeliaSonera
Telia Company AB is a Swedish multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in Fi ...
) was already operating a first generation mobile network on the
NMT
NMT may refer to:
Science and technology
* Nordic Mobile Telephone, an analogue mobile phone system
* Neurologic Music Therapy
* Neural machine translation
* Network management protocols, in the CANopen#Network management (NMT) protocols, CANopen ...
technology. Thus, Radiolinja's launch was also the start of mobile telecom competition in Europe. Several global firsts happened on the Radiolinja network, including the world's first person-to-person
SMS
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
text message, sent in 1993; the world's first fixed-mobile service bundle, launched in 1996; and the world's first paid downloadable mobile content, a ringtone, in 1998.
Radiolinja's original investors included the Finnet Group, a consortium composed of a number of Finnish corporations and local telephone companies. In the mid-1990s, Elisa (known then as Helsinki Telephone Ltd) began acquiring a greater stake in Radiolinja, ultimately leading to the mergers of Radiolinja, Radiolinja Origo, and Elisa. At this point, Elisa had also acquired some of Radiolinja's other major stakeholders, such as Soon Communications (previously Tampere Telephone Plc and before that Tampere Telephone Cooperative).
Currently the company is known as
Elisa
The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (, ) is a commonly used analytical biochemistry assay, first described by Eva Engvall and Peter Perlmann in 1971. The assay uses a solid-phase type of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to detect the presence ...
.
References
{{Reflist
Telecommunications companies of Finland