Marko Ahtisaari, formerly of Nokia (and a remarkable person), talks about Blyk, which is building a “pan-European free mobile operator funded by advertising.” Free cell service for teenagers!

He says there are two billion mobile subscribers. He says your children won’t believe there was a time when to make a phone call, you had to change next to a wall.He points out that had been a collective object (“the family phone”) became a personal object. Because of its social function, it pulls other functions into it: It becomes a watch, an alarm clock…

He points to five obstacles:

1. Reach – reaching the next two billion will drive changes in the infrastructure.

2. We are not doing a good job of tuning out communication.

3. They need to be hackable.

4. The future will be around social functionalities, e.g. gifts (Palm beaming), photostreams (Flickr), signaling (Jaiku), real identity (LinkedIn)

5. Freedom – making communications free or at least transparent pricing.

Q: What type of ads will you be serving?
A: We aren’t saying yet, but they will not be interruptive. [Tags: blyk movile telecommunications marko_ahtisaari leweb ]

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