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WeppiKioski brings multimedia into everyday use
Turku Telephone (TT) is Finland's oldest and the third largest local telephone company. Its turnover was FIM 263.3 million in 1995. The company has 541 employees. Turku Telephone operates in the city of Turku and its immediate surroundings. The company's network contains nearly 118,000 fixed subscriber connections. TT is part of the Finnet Group, which offers long-distance and international services as well as data transmission and mobile phone connections all over Finland.
In the Turku region, as is the case elsewhere in Finland, telecommunications have been handled efficiently and the growth of this field has been fast. Turku Telephone also actively pursues its own development work, and the WeppiKioski, a modern sales, marketing and information medium, is a fine example of its success.
Versatile possibilities for buyers and sellers
The WeppiKioski is a service kiosk that can be installed both indoors and outdoors. It is provided with a work-station and a touch screen, and offers versatile services and purchase possibilities in the same place at all hours. The WeppiKioski is the first to adapt for commercial use the multimedia technology known from the World Wide Web pages of the Internet network. Suppliers or sellers of products, services or information are able to present and market their products by interactive use of text, picture, video image and sound. The functions of the WeppiKioski are based on the world-wide multimedia protocol HTTP which means that service suppliers may keep up their own WeppiKioski programme from a WWW server situated anywhere in the world. For example there is nothing preventing a German company from marketing its products in a WeppiKioski in Turku. A WeppiKioski can be used for selling nearly anything, and the network can accommodate enterprises of all sizes. By means of multimedia, special offers and far-away holiday resorts can be captivatingly presented.
The user of a Weppi-Kioski may place his order and pay straight away, e.g. by credit card. At his disposal he may have, for instance, the appointment service of a private clinic or a display of holiday resorts by a travel agency, including ticket reservations, the possibility to buy theatre tickets or take out insurance, not to mention various informative services such as railway and bus time-tables or tourist information. The kiosk may also be fitted with charging facilities for chargeable cards and versatile transmission possibilities.
As no similar product can be found on the market, the WeppiKioski has been met with great interest domestically and internationally. Turku Telephone has in fact signed an agreement with the American company Sun Microsystems for world-wide marketing of the WeppiKioski. The WeppiKioski will be placed where crowds of people can be found; in shopping centres, railway and bus stations, airports, market squares and other busy trade centres. At Turku Telephone, it is anticipated that in time, the Weppi-Kioski will be as common as the telephone box and soon the functions will even be linked. The WeppiKioski with its monitor would be ideal as a videophone kiosk. In Finland, the WeppiKioski will spread to different parts thanks to the Finnet Group.
Finland's first WeppKioski was opened in Turku in March 1995.
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