Telecommunications
Landline Network
Although the fixed telephony is liberalized, Telecom Serbia is still the sole operator providing wide range of fixed telephony services. Telecom Serbia has around 3.45 million lines installed and the level of digitalization is close to 90%. Telekom Serbia figures is considered a solvent and profitable company, investing EUR 1.4 bn into development during the past six years and a with 20 percent annual profit rate during the past two years. Additionally, the company acquired a license of becoming a third mobile operator in Montenegro and purchased Telekom Srpske.
Wireless Network
There are two mobile telephony service providers: Telecom Serbia and Telenor. Both networks support 2nd and 3rd generation mobile networks. The third mobile telephony license was acquired by Austria's Mobilkom in December 2006 and this operator will start operating by June 2007. Telecom Serbia has over 4 million users, while Telenor currently stands at around 2.5 million. Mobile telephony penetration in Serbia is 73% and leaves plenty of room for further increase in number of users. Future investments would go into further development of the universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS).
Level of penetration of mobile telephony
Internet
The total capacity of Serbia's Internet link towards abroad via Telecom Serbia is 3.087Gb/s. In addition to that, Internet provider Verat has its own link with the capacity of 2 x 155 Mbit/s. Serbian Academic Network has a 1Gb/s link towards Hungary and 1 X 155 Mb/s towards Greece. Current utilization rate of all links is around 50%.
One can connect to the Internet in Serbia by using:
- Dial-up protocol up to 56 Kbit/s, commonly used for non-business purposes;
- Cross linking connections up to 2 Mbit/s, mostly leased by business users and Government;
- Cable Internet with 1 Mbit/s capacity;
- ISDN/ADSL connections offering transfer rate potential from 128 Kbit/s up to 768 Kbit/s have dynamic growth in number of users and availability.
Since Telecom Serbia introduced ADSL, broadband Internet is rapidly developing and totaling around 40,000 ADSL users. However, as a result of a large investment project by Telecom Serbia, the number of ADSL users willl reach 200,000 by the end of 2007. What is interesting is that ADSL in Serbia has a larger penetration than the dial-up service (15%). The Czech Republic and Hungary have 10 and 7.8 percent penetration respectively. Also, cable Internet is used by 30,000 users. Both Telecom Serbia and Telenor provide broadband Internet access using GPRS and EDGE technology.
There are over 40 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) out of which ten of them operate on national and 30 on local level. They are mostly users of direct link to the Internet service, provided by Telecom Serbia and re-sellers to the end users. The estimates show that there are close to 780,000 Internet users in Serbia.
The total turnover from Internet in Serbia in 2005 was €20 million.
Cable TV
The estimate is that there are over 530,000 subscribers to the cable TV system provided by 37 operators. It is expected that the number will rise to 1.2 million users.
Broadcasting
Based on the Law on Telecommincations, Serbian Broadcasting Agency is licensing TV and Radio stations for operation. As a result, the national television network has two channels (Radio Televizija Srbije - RTS 1 and 2) and there are four nationwide private television stations (Avala, B92, Fox and Pink). The situation is similar with radio FM networks, four owned by RTS and a number of private stations.
Legal framework
The field of telecommunications in the Republic of Serbia is regulated by the Law on Telecommunications, which naturally complies with Šcquis CommunautairŠµ (regulatory framework 1998). The Law is based on the following principles: providing conditions for the development of telecommunications, protection of interests of the telecommunications service users, providing conditions to effectively meet the needs of the users, impelling competition, efficiency and effectiveness, maximization of the quality of services, compliance with international standards, practice and technical standards. Thus, the lawmakers ensured liberalization of telecommunications market and set the conditions for efficient competition.
