Living Labs Europe

The mobile cluster of Tallinn is located in the capital of Estonia - a small country of 1.4 million inhabitants - that gained its independence from the Soviet Union only 15 years ago.

Starting from a point with next to no infrastructure, but with an already IT savvy population yearning for change and anything new, allowed the Estonians to skip a few steps in the development when rebuilding their country - and running past many of their neighbours in Western Europe in the process.

Tallinn’s development towards a successful mobile cluster has been boosted by public policies such as the digital signature act, enabling secure payments via mobile devices, and electronic voting. Tallinn enjoys the top position also in terms of number on payments executed via mobile devices, reflecting the extent to which users take advantage of mobile service in their daily lives.

Not only technological infrastructures, but also structures for professional business services had to be created from scratch when Estonia gained its independence. A critical factor for the success of the Estonian ICT strategy that has spurred on the development of the mobile industry is revealed in the measure of cross-sector partnerships.

Tallinn has been very successful in achieving actual public-private partnership results. Private organizations such as banks and ICT vendors were invited to participate in the development of mobile infrastructures. At the same time, an early deregulation of the market has promoted a healthy competition among service providers and operators, pulling costs down and generating a diversity of service offerings.

Eva Rikman
BDA Estonia OÜ
Tõnismägi 2
10122 Tallinn
Estonia
T: +372 627.4413
F: +372 627.4410
www.bda.ee

Download

MRI Tallinn.pdf

mWatch Tallinn 2006.pdf

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