From hungary-online-owner Mon May 29 04:47:54 1995 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id EAA10808 for hungary-online-announce-out31415; Mon, 29 May 1995 04:47:54 -0700 Received: from localhost (daemon@localhost) (fnord) by nando.yak.net (8.6.5/8.6.5) id EAA10799; Mon, 29 May 1995 04:47:31 -0700 Received: from carlson@odin.net () via =-=-=-=-=-= for hungary-online-announce@hungary.yak.net (10797) Received: from odin.net (omega.odin.net [193.130.116.3]) (fnord) by nando (8.6.5/8.6.5) with ESMTP id EAA10693 for ; Mon, 29 May 1995 04:43:21 -0700 Received: from [193.130.116.13] by odin.net with SMTP (8.6.10/1.2-btv) id NAA01290; Mon, 29 May 1995 13:31:36 GMT Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 13:25:31 +0100 To: hungary-online-announce@hungary.yak.net From: carlson@odin.net (Steven Carlson) Subject: (HOL-A) What happens when the Magyars go online? Sender: owner-Hungary-Online-announce@hungary.yak.net Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Hungary-Online@hungary.yak.net Hi there - A few people have complained to me that the list has been quiet lately. That is so. The reason is that I've been pretty much offline for the last couple weeks. As you'll read below I'm starting up a new company, and that demands a lot of time. It's a little ironic, really. I'm going into business as an Internet provider, but I'm too busy physically meeting people to deal with my email. I don't know about you, but I can easily spend two hours a day going through my "in" basket. My other problem everybody's favorite telecom, MATAV. At the moment my phone line doesn't work. And this isn't the first time. I'm just as doomed as doomed can be. Every place I've lived in Budapest has had a bad telephone line. My current phone line is dismal - it cuts out about 10 minutes into any Internet session, which means I have to take my PowerBook and use someone else's phone line to do anything more than check my mail. I guess the real reason I'm going into business is so I can sit on an ethernet to a 128 kbs connection. Wouldn't you? And hey - I'm even getting paid for this. =steve= -- What happens when the Magyars go online? hungary-online by Steven Carlson Back in the stone age of the late 70s when I was a Southern California high school student, a mysterious thing started happening to my friends. First the class reject showed up at school in blue hair and safety pins. Then the girl in art class with the beautiful long hair shaved her head completely except for a single Confusian braid. For a while it was like one of those B Grade horror movies where one by one the charactors turn into man-eating zombies. We called this phenomenon "going punk". In a similar fashion those around me are now "going online". Last year only a few of my friends here had email. Now most do. It's getting so that whenever we physically meet we find ourselves talking about subjects we've been discussing online. It's getting so that going online is no longer just about communicating - it's about being in the loop. Do you have email? Are you on the Net? Have you heard the latest Boo Radleys CD? The Internet has entered popular culture. And now the Eastern Europe angle - it's happening here too. We still have far to go, but the unwired masses of Eastern Europe are hearing about Internet. And they had a chance to check it out for themselves recently at the IFABO trade fair. IFABO is the yearly epicenter of the local computer, telecom and office equipment industries, and without a doubt this year the Net stole the show. I counted five Internet providers, as well as several email or information providers. Sun Microsystems had set up a room of PCs and was offering free Internet lessons. The telecoms were shouting about ISDN and videoconferencing. And I had something of my own to shout about at IFABO - a new company. That's right, I've finally jumped on the Internet bandwagon with a startup company called iSYS Hungary. Don't ask me what the name means - I didn't choose it. But my partner Ed says you have to capitalize it exactly like that: iSYS. Now that I'm in business I guess I can no longer call myself a true journalist. A journalist is supposed to be somebody with an independent point of view. My interest in iSYS Hungary means I won't be terribly objective if I start comparing Internet providers - it's an obvious confict of interest. But no matter, I still have plenty to talk about. (For example: the Internet.) What interests me is how the peoples of Central Europe will take to the Internet - how they will learn it, use it and adapt it to their own needs. What strikes me - and any foreigner in this region - is how information poor these societies still are. How will the Internet change this? A favorite example is the phonebook. Each of these countries still lacks one single comprehensive telephone directory. In many cases there are competing directories. And it doesn't help to call the local phone company's directory assistance because these services are often woefully overburdened. Moreover companies are moving and changing so quickly that any directory becomes rapidly out of date. Meanwhile each of the regional telecoms is either facing or undergoing privatization. The undisputed leader in this field is Hungary, where the local telephone company, MATAV, made headlines last year by taking in the largest direct investment in the region - $875 million. In each of these countries the telecommunications infrustructure was so neglected under communism that entirely new networks have to be built. Across the region, state of the art fiber optic cables are being laid to connect modern digital switching stations. It's hard to believe, but this region is right now installing the state of the art in telecommunications - the basic infrastructure of the information revolution. In some cases the revolution is taking place in advance of this infrastructure. Many non-governmental organizations now use email for day-to-day communication in the region, where making a phone call might otherwise be difficult. A computer is much more patient trying to connect to a busy line in, say, Tadjikistan. What matters is not so much the _present state_ of telecommunications here but the _pace of change_. In Austria you still can't get an itemized telephone bill. Meanwhile most districts of Budapest now have modern telephone exchanges that support this service - and many others. Where once they waited 20 years for a telephone the people of Central Europe can now have one today - albeit a more expensive cellular phone. Yet those costs are coming down. And the Central European consumer can now choose from an increasing spectrum of communication technologies. These people are prepared to embrace change. I'll leave you with one poignant example. In 1990 my friend Zsolt worked at the then state-owned company Tungsram selling lightbulbs to large buyers in the Middle East. As he tells it, the fax machine was a revelation. Previously Zsolt could only communicate with his customers with telephone and telexes. Those telex messages took days to travel through the company's internal system and were then entered into the telex machine by an indifferent operator who didn't even speak a foreign language. With a fax machine, Zsolt was able to control his own communication and turn around his contracts the same day. Within two years he had tripled sales in his region. When General Electric bought Tungram they made him head of sales for the entire company. What I want to know is this: What happens when people like Zsolt go online in their thousands? Steven Carlson is Net Media Manager at iSYS Hungary ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright (c) 1995. Permission granted to redistribute this article in electronic form for non-profit purposes only. My byline and this message must remain intact. Contact me for reprint rights. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Steven Carlson moderator/publisher - hungary-online Critical Mass Media Inc internet trainer, consultant [+361] 133-4647 in Budapest, Hungary carlson@odin.net ############# # This message to Hungary-Online-announce@hungary.yak.net # was from carlson@odin.net (Steven Carlson) # # To unsubscribe, # send "unsubscribe" to # For a full subscription (rather than this announcement-only subscription) # mail "subscribe" to # Send mail to for more information, # or to if you need human assistance. #############