The Coffee Model

Hello everyone, my name is David Leshem, a technology entrepreneur and one that thinks he knows something about RA and telecoms. I’m glad to post my first ever blog about RA and the world.

I’m based in Israel, and once I was gazing through a paper and saw an article by some anthropologist that tried to model world conflicts by drawing an analogy to a “coffee model”. Naturally, coming from Israel, one of the hot spots on the globe, since the days of Richard the Lionheart, I was attracted immediately. The main notion of this article was that countries that know to appreciate good coffee have a true hope for peace, and vice versa. Let’s look at the relatively poor quality of coffee in the US and the number of conflicts it has direct relation to. While in Israel Starbucks failed miserably since good quality coffee is appreciated and available at plenty of quality cafes. I was hooked. We, as a nation, have a hope?! I should have kept this article, even though it was a quasi serious one, it had an interesting point and something to think about.

Eric, in his recent blog, was asking whether RA could grow from a caterpillar into a butterfly. I would like to examine this further. I would like to suggest examining several models to validate this view. First let’s try and establish some common grounds where RA is highly regarded, where it is “persona non grata” and where it is in between stages. I would define the in between stage where RA is either paid lip service or of low importance. Having the privilege in the past to visit quite a few customers, I’m fully aware that RA importance depends on the management of a particular operator, yet, in many cases one can find common lines how RA is treated on a territorial basis.

The objective is to model the collective empirical experience we possess and so predict where RA could be develop to a butterfly status. It also would be interesting to propose a similar model for RA as the “coffee model” or alike. As an illustration I remember being asked by a CXO at a large Turkish mobile operator a delicate question…”why do I need this shit?” This question was raised after a couple of hours meeting with a large consulting firm. The opposite approach seen in a large Singapore mobile operator, where the second in command is responsible for RA.

Let’s and try and map RA on the globe:

Countries where RA is “persona non grata”: Turkey, most of Latin America, China, Finland, Middle East, Italy.

Countries where RA is in a between stage or paid lip service: US, France, Spain, Poland, UK? and some other former east European countries (sorry Central European countries), Israel. Well, actually in the US, RA addresses mainly the unique interconnect aspects for this market and Bellcore related table issues (NPA-NXX ect). This challenge is not really applicable for the rest of the world.

Countries where RA is highly regarded: Singapore, Australia.

I am aware it is an initial attempt to map the RA on the globe. This is where I would ask for your help and collective experience. Let’s try and categorize countries and cultures to start mapping where RA is prevailing. Having that we could jointly develop the “coffee model” for predicting where RA could become a butterfly.