larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) (07/17/90)
In article <9042@accuvax.nwu.edu> HANK@barilvm.bitnet (Hank Nussbacher) writes: > Hungary: At the beginning of 1990, the Hungarian Ministry of > Communications split into 3 organizations: telecommunications, postal > and customer services. The telecommunications company is now called > B.H.G. and has signed joined agreements with Northern Telecom. > The current waiting time in Budapest for a phone is thirteen years and > the national average is twelve phone lines per 100 people. It is not surprising to me that the telephone system in Hungary is in rather archaic condition. I have seen some of their telephone apparatus. My involvement in the telecommunications industry probably reached its zenith around 1977 when I was engaged in various international consulting activities, one of which was a project for the government of Egypt (a story for another time). My name as a consulting engineer was bantered about in various circles, and it somehow reached a company in Budapest, Hungary called Budavox. Budavox was a manufacturer of telephone apparatus which served the needs of Hungary and other [at the time] Communist-bloc countries. Budavox manufactured telephone sets, PABX's and CO apparatus. The "director" of Budavox sent me a package of information on their products that they had just printed in English (not too great an English, I might add). It seems that Budavox had learned of the growing interconnect industry in the U.S., and had decided that they wanted to export their goods and enter this lucrative marketplace. What Budavox failed to realize, however, was that in 1977 their products were already archaic and obsolete, and stood zero chance of gaining acceptance in the U.S. interconnect market. Their PABX products ranged from an all-relay wall-mounted unit with two trunks and six extensions (huge, huh? :-) ), to larger all-relay systems to relay-crossbar technology. Their products were reminiscent of Ericcson-Centrum and North Electric, using all "long-frame" style flat-spring relays. Their "crowning glory" was an electronic PABX of which they were just completing development. Unfortunately, this, too, was already obsolete because it used electronic common control circuitry with crossbar switching (shades of the WECO 800-series PABX). Digital PCM PABX's were already on the market by 1977, and here Budavox thought they could penetrate the U.S. market with a PABX that still used crossbar technology! Budavox was trying to proposition me into becoming their exclusive U.S. representative with the intention of finding distributors for their products. If they had a product that was the least bit decent, I might have taken them up on their offer since they were offering all sorts of financial incentives. However, the simple truth of the matter is that I would have been ashamed to promote any of their products in the U.S. marketplace, and I turned them down - *several* times because they kept writing and sending telexes for the better part of a year. While I have no current knowledge of the telephone situation in Hungary, I suspect that Budavox is still the principal supplier of what may still be obsolete telecommunication technology. I would be interested in hearing from any TELECOM Digest readers who have ever heard of or encountered any Budavox products. Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp. "Have you hugged your cat today?" {boulder||decvax||rutgers||watmath}!acsu.buffalo.edu!kitty!larry VOICE: 716/688-1231 || FAX: 716/741-9635 {utzoo||uunet}!/ \aerion!larry