Ocena stopnia rozwoju infrastruktury łączności w Europie Środkowej i Południowo-Wschodniej

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to check how the different "starting" level to the market economy in 1990 and a different pace of economic reform introduction affect the level of development and use of communication infrastructure in former European socialist countries in 1999. In their analysis, the Authors have used six variables, as well as multifeature and monofeature classifications, and ranking. Four groups of countries with differentiated level of communication development have been distinguished: Slovenia and Estonia (relatively well developed communication); Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Bulgaria (distinguished by good accessibility to telephones); Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine (the most visible feature is a low number of telephone connections and a small number of hosts); Albania (with a very low level of communication development). As the result of ranking, the countries have been ordered from the countries that have the best conditions and abilities of their inhabitants' communication to the countries with the weakest conditions. The best situation in this respect is in the wealthy Slovenia, and Estonia that intensively co-operates with the Scandinavian countries. The second group comprises the remaining two of the wealthiest communities in the region: the Czech Republic and Hungary. The worst developed is communication in the countries that quite recently have been inflicted by acts of war, or their governments have not started fast economic reforms (Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania). The medium developed countries compose the last group, including Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania. These all countries are the ones that potentially could belong to the first or the second group, with a high level of communication development, but during the last decade a mistake was made somewhere. In Poland, such a mistake is the inconsistent policy of consecutive governments that have not carried out the actual demonopolisation of the market of telephone services and access to Internet.