Openness - a factor for success
The decision to choose AXE was one of the factors that contributed to the success of the NMT system. But there were many more.
The most important thing was to base NMT on a complete concept - the "system architecture" that the NMT group had developed for mobile telephony. NMT chairman Håkan Bokstam established the principles for this already in January 1971, when he sat down in a hotel room in Oslo to prepare the NMT meeting that we would manage the next day. Bokstam listed 14 basic operational requirements that were the outcome of discussions in the NMT group. These requirements were needed for mobile telephony to function as the group wanted.
These "14 commandments" could be later described as nothing less than the framework that supports mobile telephony all over the world today.
The 14 operational requirements for NMT
At its meeting on January 20–22, 1971, the NMT group adopted this list of preliminary basic operational requirements for a Nordic automatic mobile telephone system:
1. The system must be able to make automatic connections and calculate charges both to and from mobile phones on the basis of dialed numbers.
2. It has to be possible to make calls from a mobile phone to any arbitrarily chosen fixed subscriber in the same country or any other country, and vice versa.
3. Calls must be possible when a vehicle is linked to its home base station or any other base station belonging to the system in the subscriber’s own country or in any of the other participating Nordic countries.
4. Calls must be possible between two vehicles irrespective of whether they are linked to the same base station or different base stations, even if they happen to be in different Nordic countries.
5. The system must be designed to enable charges to be calculated with reference to the current position of the A- and B-subscribers.
6. Subscriber capacity has to be adequate for a substantial period, both in terms of radio channels and telephone numbers.
7. The system must, if technologically and economically feasible, both permit automatic location of mobile subscribers in their own countries and preferably also in the other participating countries, and at the same time be able to register the base station of the area in which the subscriber happens to be.
8. The system must, if technologically and economically feasible, permit automatic handover of ongoing calls from one base station to an adjacent base station as a vehicle moves between them.
9. Use of a mobile phone must as far as possible resemble use of a telephone in the fixed network.
10. The security of number transfer must be adequate. This applies
particularly in the context of automatic charging.
11. Cost must be taken into account to the greatest possible extent when designing the system. This applies in particular to the cost of mobile equipment.
12. The design of the system must not require any substantial modification of existing telephone networks.
13. The same services offered to subscribers in the fixed networks (for instance telephone answering, call-forwarding (follow-me),conference calls and so on) must be available for mobile subscribers. The design of the system must enable charging for the services used.
14. The system must have facilities to prevent as far as possible disclosure of the contents of individual subscribers’ calls to other subscribers.
A fundamental aspect of the design approach to the NMT system was that no obstructive patents would be sought during the development work for NMT. On the contrary, everything was to be open and unrestricted, to be used and developed by other telecom administrations, operators and suppliers all over the world. If there could be more suppliers competing in the mobile market, the technical solutions could be better and cheaper.
This idea was more revolutionary than the NMT group had realized at first. In November 1971, a wide range of manufacturers in the telecom industry gathered at Televerket in Farsta for an information meeting about NMT. About 40 companies from all over Scandinavia were represented.
"Bokstam presented the preliminary basic specifications for the NMT system and tried to get the discussions going. We heard comments that our plans were interesting but as soon as we asked concrete questions nobody wanted to answer. Despite the large number of companies that attended the meeting, we thought it was a real fiasco," says Thomas Haug.
"Later we understood why. They were competitors, and nobody wanted to go into detail while others were listening, to avoid giving away unnecessary hints. We realized that we had to alter our tactics, so we met the suppliers one by one. This meant a ridiculous number of meetings focused largely on creating trust. It was important for them all to be convinced that nobody would be favored for nationalistic reasons, for example because the chairman of the NMT group represented Sweden," says Haug.
Another fundamental thing was that the NMT group wanted to create a mobile system for "ordinary people". Calling should be simple and cheap - as easy as making a call in the fixed telephone network.
"We never saw mobile phones as high-status gadgets for top businessmen and playboys. Perhaps they would not end up in everybody’s hands, but whatever happened, they were going to be very useful for a large group of businessmen, tradesmen and people who traveled on the job," says Thomas Haug.