Presenting effects of the liberalisation of the telecommunications market over the past year, Croatian Transport and Development Minister Bozidar Kalmeta said in Zagreb on Friday that the Croatian telecommunications market was now at a developing stage with great potential for growth.
Direct and indirect effects of the liberalisation through 2005 will lead to a rise of investments by some 150 million euros, a rise in the number of employees with new operators that are expected to employ between 500 and 700 people, with the same number of new jobs being created in supporting industries, all of this with a trend of cutting prices between 20 and 30 percent and the enhancement of the diversity and quality of services.
According to the minister, headway has been made in the liberalisation of the telecommunications market since the end of 2003 when there was still monopoly and duopoly in mobile telephony.
At the moment, there are 10 licences issued to new operators in fixed telephony, with two of them having already begun with their offer of services. Three new operators have been given licences for the third generation UMTS in the mobile telephony network, and one more licence has been granted for mobile telephony. The proceeds for the state budget from these licences total 520 million kuna, Kalmeta said.
The number of Internet services providers has risen by 20 to 35.
The Croatian telecommunications market is currently employing 13,000 people. Last year's income rose by 5.9 percent to 13.5 billion kuna. The share of the telecommunications in Croatia's Gross Domestic Product is 5.7 percent.
2004 saw 1,887,600 consumers of services in fixed telephony with the penetration of 43 percent, and 2,868,000 in mobile telephony with the penetration of 62 percent. The number of users of the Internet was 1.3 million while 50,000 Croatians used the broadband Internet.
According to the State Secretary for Transport and Communications, Drazen Breglec, there are currently 12 tariff models in fixed telephony and 36 models in mobile telephony.