ICENTRES ASSOCIATION
Bulgaria
ICENTRES ASSOCIATION
iCentres aim to narrow the gap between today’s Bulgarian civil society and the information society, by improving the technological and information skills of citizens and businesses in rural areas and facilitating the flow of information.
Tele-centers, also known as info shops, tele-cottages, or community access centers, came into being as an important means to provide a broad-base inexpensive access to a range of telecommunication and information services, among them Internet access. In Europe and America, the first tele-centers appeared in the mid 80s. By the end of the 90s they had already become a key component in development strategies for many Latin American, Asian and African countries and a model as to how to provide publicly accessible information resources and communication services to communities that lack those and are characterized by fairly low income levels. Even today for various regions of Europe and the world, tele-centers remain the main means to include economically less advantaged areas into the general informational development of the country and into global tendencies in the development of information and communication technology (ICT).
Tele-centers differ in terms of the scope of services they offer, providing most often access to telephone lines, telefax, computers and Internet. Business development in small communities caused new services, such as scanning, printing, copying, text processing and design, advertising and messages, to appear in small communities. A further opportunity for tele-centers, once they have reached a “critical mass” of users, is the provision of next-generation services such as:
- Translation services, computer and language courses
- Establishing an environment for the exchange of cultural and educational information
- Agricultural, tourist and other types of regional information
- Interaction with businesses and institutions - e-government and e-commerce
- Vocational re-training courses
- Accounting and legal services
- Providing conditions for distance learning, tele-medicine, etc.
There are several different models that can be applied to tele-centers. Some tele-centers offer free services, while others charge users a certain fee. Some tele-centers specialize in computer training for beginners, while others work with clients that have some experience in the area. Some tele-centers are public and some are the result of private initiative.