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National Geographic : 2002 Jan
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The New Europe for a new form of communication known as the "txt msg." That's a text message, printed on the phone's small screen, which has the dual virtues of being silent-so you can communi cate with your pals during class-and cheaper than voice communication. The fascination with phones has been a boon for European business; the continent is home to the world's largest maker of cell phones, Finland's Nokia, and the world's larg est mobile-operating company, Britain's Voda fone. You might think these companies have been lucky-in the right continent at the right time. But the phone phenomenon has little to do with luck. Europeans' mobile mania is a direct consequence of Europe's quest for unity, as I learned when I visited the big glass struc ture-more like a greenhouse than an office building-on an inlet of Helsinki bay that serves as the world headquarters of Nokia. I had gone there to visit Yrjo ("It's Finnish for George," he told me) Neuvo, Nokia's chief tech nology officer, who was one of the original architects of GSM. As the continent's 40-odd countries move toward tighter and tighter networks, though, there are Europeans who don't value the momentum toward unification. There is out right disdain in some quarters for the legion of Eurocrats in Brussels and their steady output of rules and regulations. In England the strug gle between Europhiles and Euroskeptics is now a central element of national politics. That's why a hardworking greengrocer named Steve Thoburn became a national hero. An intense 36-year-old with curly hair and a gold ring in his right ear, Steve was caught red-handed weighing and selling bananas by the pound at his shop in the old shipbuilding town of Sunderland. This was a violation of EU Directive 80-181-EEC, requiring that fresh produce in any EU country must be sold in metric measures-i.e., liters and kilograms. Thoburn was convicted of this crime in the city court. Britain's national newspapers had a field day with the story-they dubbed Steve the Metric Martyr-and the Euroskeptics adopted him as the poster boy of their cause. The new euro could challenge the "In the early days of mobiles, Europe had several different national standards for mobile phones, so you couldn't really use your Ger man phone in the U.K.," Neuvo recalled in his calm, serious way. "Then in 1982 we needed to switch from analog networks to digital. We could easily have done the same thing as the U.S., create several different digital standards, but at that time there was something in the air. This idea of Europeanization was moving forward in many areas: joint research projects, common markets, that sort of thing. "So we said, 'Yes, let's make one telephone standard for all of Europe.' We called it the Global System for Mobiles, even though it was originally just for one continent. We never expected the penetration rates we have now, but I have no doubt that the single standard is a major reason for it. The ability to connect instantly with anybody-that's what creates value in a network." Steve's tiny market stall, Thoburn's Fruit & Veg, is a veritable EU of greenery: Dutch leeks, Spanish peppers, French apples, British spin ach, and, of course, Brussels sprouts. When I stopped by to see the Metric Martyr, he told me he was thoroughly uncomfortable with that title and with the way his case had been turned into a political football. "I don't give a toss about politics," he said. "I've never cast a vote. I have nothing against metrics. If somebody comes into me premises and says,'C'mon, love, give us a kilo of bananas,' I'll sell it to her. But nobody ever asks for that." His message for the EU regulators was simple: "Leave a bloke alone so he can give his customers what they want." I got a noisier and more politicized version of the anti-EU case at a parade of German nationalist parties on a sweltering May Day in Mannheim. Lined up along the Bismarck strasse were some 200 marchers waving the World War I German flag and carrying large NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, JANUARY 2002
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