Telecottage Handbook- How to Establish and Run a

CHAPTER 2 - THE TELECOTTAGE CONCEPT AND MODELS
The telecottage must
guarantee availability, quality
and reliability of services, in
line with regulations and
mandated conditions – it is
very important to make these
clear to users publicly (e.g.
clearly posted hours of
operation, a price list, etc.).
2.6 Service system and technology of telecottages
Service culture – For telecottages established because of civic initiative, the
element of service-orientation is not self-evident. This is not a mistake or misunderstanding,
but simply a natural consequence of civic thinking: “Here is
the equipment, let’s let anyone use it, whenever needed, because these
things are ours.” Nevertheless, even in under optimal conditions, the culture
of civic institutions does not operate faultlessly. A telecottage is intended to
be a service provider institution. This is important in both principle and practice,
even for the smallest and friendliest community, because for the individual
user much can depend upon whether or not services can be accessed
when they are needed. If this is not taken into consideration, then instead of
a telecottage, the entity is actually a less structured, less regulated club.
Naturally, this model also has a raison d’être in certain circumstances.
Although the essence of a telecottage is to make ICT infrastructure available
to anyone, in addition to its other operations, it is always realized as a special
set of services. This does not contradict the fact that telecottage cannot be
defined by its services, because it is considered to be an open service profile
institution. In truth, it is more apt to say that telecottages display great variety
from a specialized or sectoral perspective. Nevertheless, it is always
staffed and technically equipped for specific services.The service/technology
profile can help in unveiling the initial, structural, and operational requirements
in a telecottage when introducing a particular service.
Box 2 summarizes the range of telecottage services. No single telecottage
can realistically aspire to offering the full range. Indeed, Hungarian telecottage
managers assert that there are no two telecottages with an identical set
of services.The service portfolio develops gradually. Just as “a little dog learns
to bark”, a telecottage incrementally becomes capable of providing an
increasingly complex range of services. Further, local needs and demands
vary. A popular tourist resort has different needs and circumstances from a
religious centre or a settlement wrecked by unemployment. Similarly, the
context is different for an environment with many children and young people,
or conversely, many old people, where there is a significant ethnic minority,
and so forth. A telecottage must accommodate local needs, and thus, an
initial analysis of needs is very important for determining what kinds of services
to provide. It is also useful to assess community resources, which comprise
a very important basis for the development of telecottage services (see
Section 5.9).
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