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	Access Networks
	ELISA Communications Corporation
	EURESCOM workshop OSA and PARLAY

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Annakaisa Häyrynen  Elisa Communications Corporation annakaisa.hayrynen@elisa.fi

It all started 120 years ago, when "Helsinki Telephony Society" was given the permission to operate on 31 January 1882. From those times through incremental changes of both name and organisation the company now exists as Elisa Communications Corporation. The company is listed at the Helsinki stock exchange and its ownership is widely spread in Finland. The corporation currently has about 8,700 employees. Elisa offers an extensive range of services for private and organisational customers in fixed, mobile, and data networks as well as latest technology for network management and customer support solutions. By the end of September 2001 Elisa Group had a total of 1.5 million fixed subscriptions, equalling a market share of over 35 per cent of fixed subscriptions in Finland. Elisa Communications mobile operations subsidiary Radiolinja had about 1.3 million subscribers at the same.

Elisa is focused on enabling its customers’ success and well being. Elisa Communications Corporation offers to its customers the possibility of transmitting information, services and experiences electronically in ways that are free from the restrictions of time, place and media.

The major areas of activity are the service operator business, mobile business, network business and other business. The service operator business consists of ElisaCom Ltd, ISP activities, invoicing, data services, international calls as well as managing the local telcos being Elisa’s subsidiaries outside Helsinki region, to name some of the major activities. The mobile business consists of Oy Radiolinja Ab Group, the mobile operator and the sales and distribution organisation)

The other business including the international operations and for instance Comptel Ltd, whose mission is to help operators to succeed in their businesses by providing them with the world’s leading mediation software and business-to-business solutions.

The other business includes the international operations and, for instance, Comptel Ltd, whose mission is to help operators to succeed in their businesses by providing them with the world’s leading mediation software and business-to-business solutions.

From the early days of Elisa

	Network maintenance in the 1930s.
	The first telephone lines on the roofs of Helsinki in the 1890s.
	Manually operated telephone exchange in the 1890s.

Since 1 February 2002 the research activities at Elisa are part of a new organisational unit called Elisa Innovations. Apart from the Research Center, Elisa Innovations includes a business incubator, External Ventures and IPR and regulation activities.

The Research Center has been focussing not only on emerging technologies, application and network activities, but also on customer-centric research activities consisting of research in the areas of users, usability, consumers, and user interfaces. The goal is to achieve an optimum in exploiting especially qualitative methods in order to speed up the whole R&D process and get the kind of products and services that are based on real needs faster to the market.

Based on the latest technology, the task of our customer-centric research activities is to create a base for strategic decision-making, fast and leading edge development of services- and products, and to ensure the competitiveness in highly dynamic market place. The more technically focussed, special areas of Elisa's research include mobile networks and services, wireless data transfer, broadband networks, IP-based solutions, application integration and IT security.

The essentially important way of doing our research is collaboration. For years, EURESCOM has been one of the most important forums for that. We have also an extensive portfolio of EU projects, and our collaborative activities include also forums like W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and most important "substantial" forums like IETF and others. Our ambitious aim is to work together with the leading edge organisations. Therefore we take our own research commitments very seriously – aiming to be a desired R&D partner also in the future.

Matti Mattheiszen, President and CEO since 1997

For years Elisa has been an active participant in the EURESCOM community. Currently Elisa is, for example, leading the N-GOSSIP project, which is focussing on next generation networks and SIP. One of the areas, where Elisa has been very active, are issues related to customer-centric as well as marketplace-related research, like the Future CAMERA project (P1144). Elisa also heavily contributed to EURESCOM research activities in the 'Customers and Markets' area, where a consequent qualitative and multidisciplinary approach has been pursued. From the same domain are also the projects P1102 – Mobile Electronic Commerce (eMporio), P1146 GOLD – Getting OnLine Communities to Develop, and P1119 The Third Dimension – Human-Centred Approach to Designing New Mobile Services for Different Terminal Equipment.

Another important area of research are mobile issues, in the frontline the 'Beyond 3G' research, formerly called '4G', when for example the study P1145 4G the next frontier,- was running. There are quite a few other activities, also from more technical areas, like the Tsunami IPv6 project P1113. Our participation and the results of the projects, in which we participated, have been widely recognised, and we are looking forward to new interesting challenges for pre-competitive collaboration also in future.

Elisa Communications Corporation is one of the very old telephone companies in Europe, but is very young at heart, especially regarding our research activities. The wide range, of innovative areas, from networks and applications to digital economy issues, and the collaborative spirit, which was proven by many collaborative research activities, will ensure that Elisa's genuine touch to business will stay alive in the future.