Telecommunications
Hungarians created lots of jokes about people who were waiting for a telephone line in the sixties and seventies. The service was said to be the second worst in Europe until the late 80s, when the people still had to hope for a line for several years or even decades. By the mid 90s, the demand and supply became balanced, the jokes disappeared, and now we see that there is a notable oversupply on the market. What happened?
Electronic mass media services were controlled and administered by the Hungarian Post until 1990, when it was broken up into independent services, namely the privatized Matáv (Hungarian Telecommunications Company) and the state owned Antenna Hungária. Ideological control disappeared for ever, and the people can freely watch all kinds of channels.
The telecommunications network is now built at a good level in Hungary. The national backbone network (linking 54 primary centres) is now completely of optical fibres. Optical fibres are generally laid in Budapest, the bigger towns and tourist areas (particularly in the Western part of Hungary) are technically well equipped, while in the rest of the country the traditional metal telephone wiring is still more important. The replacing of metal wires and the digital development of the network continuously go on. The Hungarian telephone service probably became the best and most reliable network in this part of Europe, and in general, it can now give the same services as the EU countries on average.
The owner of the network is Matáv. The Hungarian state has only a share of 6% in the company, while two thirds of the shares are controlled by Deutsche Telekom and Ameritech. About 15-20% of the shares of Matáv is present on the Budapest stock market: this means the role of minor investors is also important.
The telephone main line density in Hungary is more than 30 lines per 100 people, which means that - in principle - 90% of the families have access to phones and services available through telecommunication. This figure includes the mobile phones too. If you look at the advertising campaign in the field of mobile communications in Hungary, you will realize that the competition among the rivals is really strong now.
The revenue of Matáv dramatically increased these years. The sales mainly come from its voice services. However, only 1-2% of the population is estimated to be a subscriber to Internet. Matáv is smelling further profits in its on-line services, because Hungary is behind the leading European countries in Internet usage. Last year, Matáv drastically cut its late night prices and offered special tariffs to have new clients and to support targeted services such as Internet and data transmission businesses.
There is already an evident convergence between mobile and fixed line services. Now there are portable phones that can connect the client to the network.
Companies, universities and individuals greatly profited from this development, and the world opened its other side for them. Equipment and software are now available, normally at acceptable price, and their price is relatively going down. Many of the university departments in Hungary invested EU aid money into developing their own and joining others' telecommunication network. The computer sciences and the knowledge to use hardware immensely developed within the younger generation during the past ten years, because computer use became a general subject in schools. At the same time, the number of geography classes was somewhat reduced.

Television
Television broadcast started in 1957 in Hungary (radio in 1925). The regional studios of the TV were organized in the 80s (for the radio, soon after the 2nd world war), and they started concentrating on local news and affairs. The growing independence of these regional studios also meant the loosening of the control from above. The cable networks were also expanding: naturally, they were first built in the large residential areas of big towns, but now they are widely available throughout Hungary.
A great step was done in 1993/94, when several new regional and city studios received permission to broadcast. However, they often had problems at starting. Having the permission did not automatically resulted in the start of broadcasts. To put some light on the magnitude of these changes and to explain the problems, here are some interesting data. In 1993/94, altogether 147 new local radios and televisions were approved, but only 40% of them (40 radios and 19 televisions) started actual broadcasting.
In the second round of the bids for the distribution of television and radio frequencies, there were 170 applications (there were only about 74 available). There was only one bidder for 25 studios, two for 19 studios, and 107 for the remaining 30. So in some areas there was real competition for the service (or business).
According to the concession law, the frequencies are owned by the state. The Telecommunications Authority of Hungary leases the frequencies (usually for 7 to 10 years), while the actual broadcast service is done by Antenna Hungária. The so called "content providing" is controlled by the National Radio and Television Board (ORTT). This body - the members are delegated by various parties - decides on the proportion of public and commercial broadcasting companies.
At present, the national television network includes three traditional ground-based broadcasts: two of them are commercial stations (TV2 and RTL Klub), one is a public station (MTV1). Two public televisions use satellites (MTV2 and Duna, the latter one can be received well beyond the Carpathians). There are over 100 private and cable (or community) televisions in Hungary, and some of them can be received in the most part of the country.
Those programmes which are broadcast from ground stations can be seen by more people, access is easier. Watching satellite programmes needs your own dish, directed to a specific telecommunications satellite. (Such a satellite can give place even for 100 channels.) Twenty to thirty minute newsreels are broadcast several times a day and they almost always show maps too. These newsreels are certainly among the most popular evening programmes with the Hungarian telly watchers. Practically, every Hungarian family has its own television set, although they are of various reception capacity.

Newspapers
It is very difficult to give a current figure or an overall picture of the print media of present Hungary. The rising of local or regional media is a rather new phenomena in Hungary. In the second half of the 80s, the role of the national papers was broken by the new papers published in and for the towns or smaller districts. Hungary got a modern press-law, and the samizdat papers lost their meaning. (I have never seen any map in a samizdat publication.) Now we have 26 regional dailies published in more than 1 million copies, 48 regional weeklies and 63 monthly magazines. A regional newspaper is printed in 40 thousand copies on average. It is interesting to know that about 8000 periodicals of varying publishing frequency are reported published in Hungary, but in reality only a fraction of them appears on the news-stands or in your letter box. Thus, the situation of the press can be very well compared to that of the television and radio broadcasting industry, where again only a part of the permissions is practically used.

Conclusions
As a by-product of the technical and political developments of the past ten years, the feeling of local patriotism and interest in regional affairs have greatly increased since the start of the great political and economic changes. The attitude of the readers, television watchers and Internet users among the younger generations has changed.
I would like to draw your attention to a good example, namely an existing and interesting network, "Sulinet", which links the schools (or the pupils) of Hungary. I am happy to tell you that now both cartography and geography have their own role in the system. My colleague from the Department of Cartography, Jesús Reyes would introduce you to the story.

Another colleague, László Zentai will give you details about a promising "mission" of the home page of the Department of Cartography, in which he has been presenting and commenting the mistakes in Hungarian mass media maps.