From hungary-online-owner Tue May 16 09:17:16 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id JAA17184 for hungary-online-out31415; Tue, 16 May 1995 09:17:16 -0700 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id JAA17172; Tue, 16 May 1995 09:16:55 -0700 Received: from bruner@ind.eunet.hu () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-online@hungary.yak.net (17169) Received: from ind.eunet.hu (root@ind.eunet.hu [192.84.225.42]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with SMTP id JAA17154 for ; Tue, 16 May 1995 09:16:13 -0700 Received: from [192.84.226.92] (bruner.dial.eunet.hu) by ind.eunet.hu with SMTP id AA21484 (5.67a8/SZTAKI-4.01 for ); Tue, 16 May 1995 18:17:18 +0200 X-Sender: pop029@ind.eunet.hu (Unverified) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 18:11:38 +0100 To: hungary-online@hungary.yak.net From: bruner@ind.eunet.hu (Rick Bruner) Subject: (HOL) Hungary Gets Wired X-Charset: US X-Char-Esc: 0 Sender: owner-Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Greetings HOLers, While I would guess many if not most of you are also subscribing to my Hungary Report mailing list, I suppose a few of you aren't, so I submit here a copy of the feature story I wrote for yesterday's edition about the IFABO fair, as it's so painfully on-topic for this list. For those of you that still haven't subscribed to the Hungary Report, but who are interested (once a week issue of newsbriefs, one feature story (such as below) and Tibor Vidos' political column), send a one-word message "subscribe" (minus quotes) to the address: . Here's the piece, Cheers, Rick Hungary gets wired, tired at IFABO computer fair By Rick E. Bruner Copyright (c) 1995 The Internet has at long last arrived to Hungary, heralded by half a dozen new and soon-to-launch commercial Internet providers at the fifth annual IFABO computer fair, last week. The new providers were the sensation of the fair, particularly among teenage boys, who waited long on line to check out those dirty Web sites they'd heard so much about. This despite the fact half of the represented businesses don't have their services up and running yet and were featuring only canned displays of World-Wide Web pages or suffering the quality of the overloaded academic network for demonstrations. "The word 'Internet' just entered Hungary this year," said Peter Barcza, Internet implementation manager at IBM. Big Blue is joining the frenzy of those providing connections to the Net through its Global Network, recently expanded to include secure Internet gateways to clients. Like two other services, IBM hopes to have its Internet access available by the middle of the summer. Steven Carlson, probably the best-known Internet consultant in Budapest, announced plans for iSYS, a provider due online in July or August, in partnership with the local networking systems integrator, EuroTrend. iSYS, which will offer Texas-based Performance Technology's Instant Internet product, a turn-key interface to put corporate local area networks on the Internet, will be targeting corporate users. While refusing to disclose planned prices, iSYS pledged to have the cheapest rates on the market. "If we had been online already, we could have signed up loads of people at this conference," Carlson said. "Everybody said they don't want to wait till the summer -- they want to be online now." Another prelauch company, Pronet, was talking prices: $75 a month including 20 free hours for SLIP (full Internet access) accounts, $5 each additional hour. That already substantially undercuts the cheapest current commercial Internet provider, Eunet (administered by the Academy of Science's computer department, SZTAKI), which costs $112.5 for the first 20 hours of service. The first independent provider, Odin, a nine-month-old service with a spotty service record, has merged with Microsystem Telekom, a successful spin-off of the otherwise bankrupt computer distributor, and has changed its name Internet Hungary. Rounding off the market contenders was Datanet, a venture of Rolitron Holdings. Having abandoned 1993's grandiose plans of becoming the "CompuServe of Hungary" with a huge dedicated mainframe and 300-odd telephone lines, the company has scaled back purely to providing Internet services and other online network access via its SprintNet node. Priced at $7/hour access to the Internet, its fees are easily the highest quoted. Not as high as market leader CompuServe's, of course. After a year and a half's presence in the market (including six months of suspended service), CompuServe has nearly 1,000 subscribers to date, says Managing Director Janos Muth, despite charging up to a $20-an- hour access fee for a top 9600 bps connection speed. Thirty new members joined during the fair. Beyond online services, IFABO fair was a boon for attractive young women. A plentiful natural resource here, they were employed by the hundreds to offer brochures, demonstrations and a bit of levity to an otherwise rigidly businesslike event. Every bit of attention helped, as IFABO has cemented its reputation for being a "must" for vendors, distributors and other IT service providers, fighting tooth and nail for position in a small, crowded marketplace. This year's fair, May 9-13, was the biggest to date by a narrow margin, with 467 exhibitors from 34 countries. Net exhibition space was in fact down a few square meters from last year, at a total of 19,565 m2, but the approximately 63,000 visitors was a 5% increase from 1994, though below the predicted 70,000 mark. "More and more it feels necessary to be present" at IFABO, said Laszlo Szilvassy, director of the local Computer 2000, Europe's largest computer distributor. "People would fear to lose customers if they were not here. [The growth in number of exhibitors this year] means the market is becoming denser, not that it's expanding rapidly." Comparing the fair to the industry's other large annual event, the autumn's CompFair, Microsoft's Marketing Manager Ervin Sperla said, "IFABO is more for large corporate clients. At CompFair, you see fewer suits and conference rooms and more teenagers." Microsoft, which did $6 million in sales in Hungary last year, was represented for the first time this year at IFABO with a dedicated booth, and it arrived in style. One of the biggest booths at the fair, it was also the one guards at the front gate were telling visitors had the best looking hostesses. Albacomp, a local assembler and distributor of name brand products, held its position as PC industry leader last year with a turnover of HUF 5.5 billion ($45 million), a 25% growth over its 1993's performance, but not without difficulty, said sales manager Zoltan Balazs. "We have to work harder for the same growth," he said. The government's new "shock" economic reform measures announced last March, including a 9% devaluation in the forint and a new 8% duty on all product imports, has impacted the IT market hard, and many distributors are seeing a drop in sales as a result, Balazs said. "The 8% duty has only been an advantage for the smugglers," he complained. His sentiment was shared other exhibitors, who say the smuggling particularly of memory chips is rampant. Building on its name recognition, Albacomp announced it will open a retail chain of end-user shops in all major cities starting this spring. - 30 - ----------------------- ----------------------- Rick E. Bruner Freelance journalist, Budapest Editor: The Hungary Report (online) <100263.15@compuserve.com> "info" c/o: Tel/Fax: (36-1) 202-4700 ############# # This message to Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net # was from bruner@ind.eunet.hu (Rick Bruner) # # To unsubscribe, # send "unsubscribe" to # An announcement-only subscription (less volume) is available # at # Send mail to for more information, # or to if you need human assistance. #############