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01/09/2004

The mobile communication group at Siemens (Siemens mobile) will be equipping the telephone booths of Turk Telecom, Turkey's largest fixed-network operator, with 70,000 card payphones and a complete management system. The phones to be supplied will include models that enable passers-by to not only make phone calls around the globe but to also utilize wireless date transfer over Wireless LAN as well as numerous multimedia services. The first of the payphones, which are being manufactured in Spain, will be delivered in January 2005.

Mobile phones are enjoying a boom. Yet the traditional telephone booth continues to be a popular communication option. While a user's mobile phone might be hopelessly searching for a network in an underground mass transit station, for example, the telephone in the nearest phone booth is always ready to serve. And their easy-to-understand cost structure, too, continues to make public payphones an attractive point of communication for many passers-by: Because regardless of whether they're paying in cash or with a phone card, in a phone booth each call is paid directly at the payphone - so the user always knows the cost of the last call, regardless of whether it's just local or an international call made in a foreign country. Siemens is now supplying Turk Telecom with an end-to-end solution consisting of turnkey cardphones. The phones will be installed nationwide and will be able to be maintained centrally thanks to a comprehensive analysis system.

In addition to the basic devices, Siemens will also be installing models in highly frequented locations, such as airports or railroad stations, that offer additional services to passers-by. The first model operates with WiFi technology to create hotspots around the phone booth that afford wireless data transfer at distances of up to 100 meters from the booth. Users who log in at these hotspots by inserting a card in the phone can also purchase Internet access for a specific period time if they wish. Under this system, the user receives a code that authorizes his or her notebook to access the Internet and transfer data at no additional expense during the selected period of time. Other passers-by can simultaneously make regular phone calls from the same telephone booth - or activate Internet service for themselves.

The second model, the so-called Multimedia Payphone, turns the phone booth into a public Web portal, even if the user does not have a laptop. This model enables passers-by to surf the Internet, retrieve and reply to e-mails or send short messages (SMS) right from the phone at a transfer rate of up to 45 megabits per second. Thanks to the integrated camera, it's also possible for them to send photo vacation greetings to friends and family back home. And if a user happens to discover on the Internet that a theater in his or her vacation locale is staging an interesting play, for example, he or she could reserve a seat online, pay for it directly by credit card - and then print out the admission ticket right in the phone booth with the aid of the integrated ticket printer.