Oh no! Your flight into Helsinki-Vantaa airport has been delayed, and you have missed your connection onwards and home. Quick glance at the departures screen - the next plane going your way is not for three more hours. Bloated and filled with self-loathing from too much airline food, you aren't hungry; but you could do with a Pepsi. Alas, you have no Finnish cash.
The Finns, however, have the highest rate of mobile telephone penetration in the world, and the Pepsi machine at Helsinki airport is slightly different to those elsewhere. It doesn't accept cash or credit cards, it just suggests that you dial a certain number with your mobile phone. If you do, your mobile bill is charged the Finnish equivalent of 50p, and the machine instantly releases a can of Pepsi.
Next week, Eircell and Nokia are planning to show off an Irish version of this machine at the Comms show in Dublin's RDS, with mobile users sending an SMS message to a given number.
All this is merely the start of an even more beautiful relationship between you and your mobile phone. A quick call to a premium number could deliver you any number of vending machine products, from chocolate to condoms. CIE could use it for entrance to the bus or the DART. The jukebox in your local cafe, the security gates of your building, the parking meter on St Stephen's Green, all might require a telephone number.
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