West meets East

Tarnow, Poland-We're on the midnight train to Budapest, which is far less romantic than it sounds. As the train crawls through southern Poland, my brother-a Peace Corps volunteer who speaks fluent Polish-is arguing with the conductor about our tickets.

Although we had reservations for a sleeper cabin, the conductor says our tickets are wrong. We paid extra for the sleeper car, which isn't nearly full, but we're relegated to a regular cabin instead. The trouble was predictable. Despite great effort to confirm our reservations, no one at the state travel agency gave us the same answer.

That's Poland for you-a place where businesses don't seem to understand the ultimate benefits of a satisfied customer and therefore don't try too hard to please. Whatever the question, "nie" is the standard response, and a Westerner's love of customer care doesn't mean a thing. But you can hardly blame the locals, who have long been sedated on the letdowns of a non service-oriented society.

It will take an awful lot of political, social and economic change to wake them up to modern service concepts. It also takes a lot of telecommunications change. The global industry desperately wants to unravel its bundle of modern technology joy right to Poland's doorstep, but progress has been slow. In fact, some companies have pulled out of Poland because of government indifference or corruption, administrative red tape and social misunderstanding.

As a result, many people in Poland still wait years to get phone service. Calls to some businesses repeatedly get routed nowhere. Even government organizations wait many months for computer equipment and data access. On a Warsaw-bound train, you're liable to run into a few people commuting simply to use the Internet, a modern equivalent of heading to town for supplies.

In Krakow, a youthful and liberal city, there is a glimmer of hope. The first Internet cafe I ever entered was just off of Krakow's ancient main square in a warm, thoughtfully-lit cellar where the lines of people waiting to use the computers were strangely reminiscent of Communist-era news footage showing lines of people waiting for toilet paper. Still, the ambience of this place was right. The beer was great, and the service exceptional. It was like a petri dish for telecom's impact on the social experience. It also says something about how one society's reality ultimately dictates the shape and manner of telecom adoption.

Meanwhile, Budapest, Hungary, offers more than just a glimmer of hope.

Pest, which lies in the shadow of hilly, picturesque Buda across the Danube, is a commercial engine run by a social strata of entrepreneurs that aim to please, and they work the urban grid for all it's worth.

In fact, the selling begins right at the train platform. Locals with apartments to rent, guest rooms and tourist homes all work the crowd, asking people how long they will stay, showing them room descriptions written in warped English, flashing dubious-looking broker licenses.

We meet a fast-talking but polite guy who brokers apartments not far from the Danube, and he'll take us to view one before we buy. As it turns out, apartment broker is only one of his day jobs. He also drives a cab. During a riotously fast ride through Pest, he pulls out a wireless phone and makes several calls, speaking in rapid Hungarian. It's several minutes before he addresses us in English again. "This thing is my life," he says, talking about the phone.

Budapest is a wireless society in a way most Western cities can only hope to be. Ads for wireless service blanket the city, and the Western burger franchises are filled with phone-toting kids. Budapest is not only grasping the rules and benefits of the service-oriented society but is taking control of the concept.

As Eastern Europe struggles with many changes, the role of modern telecommunications may be realized in fits and starts. Despite the world's urge to deliver a post-Cold War makeover here, it must temper its exuberance with the realization that it can't force-feed modern ways to everyone. The telecom industry must do the same by reconciling its eagerness for growth and exploitation with technology's tremendous social impact. We're mad to make the world plug-and-play, but long-term success comes through awareness of both social limits and possibilities, not through making over other societies in our own high-tech image.