Pointer was a mobile phone network provided by
Finnish company
Posti- ja telelaitos (now
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 F ...
Finland) for a short time in the 1980s. The technology was similar to that of standard
cordless phone
A cordless telephone or portable telephone has a portable telephone handset that connects by radio to a base station connected to the public telephone network. The operational range is limited, usually to the same building or within some sho ...
s, which could be used via
hotspot
Hotspot, Hot Spot or Hot spot may refer to:
Places
* Hot Spot, Kentucky, a community in the United States
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities
* Hot Spot (comics), a name for the DC Comics character Isaiah Crockett
* Hot Spot (Tra ...
s around Finland, at least to make calls. Pointer phones lacked
roaming capability. A sign on the wall would show the passers-by that a Pointer hotspot was available.
Hotspots were placed at post offices and further expansion was planned. However,
NMT phones were rapidly becoming popular and displaced the Pointer before it had time to become established.
Some signs showing Pointer hotspots still exist, such as on the wall of a post office on Mechelininkatu Street in Helsinki.
References
{{reflist
Mobile radio telephone systems