Town Of Nokia To Replace Landline Phones

I haven’t had a landline in years (and haven’t missed it, except for the time I needed to set up our TiVo - which isn’t even an issue any longer since TiVos can be set up on a network now as I’ve discovered thanks to a good number of you fine Gnomies out there), so I don’t know what’s taken these wacky Finns so long! Matti Huuhtanen of the Associated Press (via The Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports:

The Finnish town of Nokia, left in the shadow of its more famous namesake company, is going mobile.

Nokia’s municipal workers will be given cellular handsets to replace their landline phones in a move aimed at improving communication, officials said.

“People will be able to call direct to officials’ mobile phones,” said Martin Andersson, the town’s project leader for information technology. “The main aim is to make employees more reachable.”

The town of 28,000 in southern Finland, where Nokia Corp. started 140 years ago as a wood-pulp mill, will provide 1,300 municipal employees with mobile handsets by June, when their landline numbers will automatically connect to cell phones.

Switching to mobile phones will also save landline phone costs and will not be more expensive for customers calling town officials, Andersson said…

[tags]cell phone,nokia,finland,landline,martin andersson,municipal employees[/tags]