Executive Thought Leadership

Mobility Without Borders

A first person perspective.

I sat in Prague in an Internet café, satisfying my desire for caffeine and email, and reflecting upon how smoothly my trip had gone from a communications standpoint.

I had been in town for a three-day conference on the expansion of the European Union. Before arriving, I had been concerned about the availability of mobile phone and Internet access. I downloaded email from the wireless hotspot in the airport lounge in Seattle, Washington, before departing the U.S. for the Czech Republic. While in flight, I produced a sizeable queue of outgoing emails. Would I actually be able to send them upon reaching my destination, I wondered?

My GSM phone connected without difficulty upon arrival at the Prague airport. Then I got a positive indication of the week’s productivity potential: A text message was waiting from the local mobile carrier detailing how to get international dialing instructions, directory assistance, and tourist information in English.

At my hotel, I was relieved to discover that Internet access was available in the lobby, meeting rooms, and guest rooms. Connecting my laptop, I quickly signed onto the Cisco intranet. Since I did not want to be disturbed by phone calls during the conference, I called up the intranet Web page allowing me to forward corporate calls to voicemail instead of to my mobile phone. Knowing that I could receive text messages on my cell phone, I then easily changed my settings to send me text alerts of those voicemails. This way, I could get simple, unobtrusive messages on my mobile phone. The messages even let me know if the voicemails were marked urgent. Listening only to urgent voicemails saves significantly on international roaming charges and allowed me to use conference breaks for networking with the group.

As I explored the city during some free time, I realized how connected Prague is. Quite a few cafés advertise Internet access.

I stayed in Prague for a few days after the conference in one of the many historic inns that dot the city. While beautiful, there was no Internet access there. However, the nearby café offered laptop access for the very reasonable price of six cents per minute. A few minutes there each morning allowed me to download email, reply to urgent issues, and generally keep projects on track.

Some might consider doing a bit of business email an intrusion into my personal time. But I found it a small price to pay to significantly reduce the deluge of messages that otherwise would have awaited my return. I would have been in the café anyway (nothing like an espresso to start the day!), and “keeping up” greatly reduced the anxiety that plagues those of us accustomed to being always connected.

All in all, traveling internationally proved to be frustration-free, communications-wise, thanks to broadly available Internet access and the latest cell phone tools and mobile network services that make hopping across network and language boundaries now a seamless experience.

Douglas Frosst Executive Editor, Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly