1. Internet Access in Bulgaria historic review and current status by Veni Markovski President and Chairman of the Board Internet Society – Bulgaria web: isoc.bg email: veni @ veni.com sip: 2460056 @ sip2go.com This presentation is distributed under Creative Commons - attribution license

2. History 1987 – 1999 mainly dial-up 1996 – first international private line to Merit (9600 bps over X.25, at $ 3000 / month) some leased lines (9600 bps; telecom introduced noise-production technologies to cut using synchronous modems for higher speeds) 1996 – first presidential election campaign on-line 1999 – introduced licenses on ISP (and successful court fight to abolish them) 2000 – wi-fi introduced

3. History 2001 – building the first LANs 2001 – first parliamentary elections campaign on- line 2001 – VoIP is made legal 2002-2005 – foreign investments come into the sector 2005 – complete LAN coverage in big cities 2006 – wi-max licenses operational

4. Number of Internet Users and ISPs YearUsersISPs 19943,0003+ 199976,00010+ 2001512,000<100 20062,400,000hundreds distribution (percentage of all users): ADSL:11 % LAN: 55 % cable:24 % dial-up:10 %

5. LAN technical details Typical network uses: 8-Port-10/100 switches (chipset rtl8309sb mostly Repotec, Ladox, TP-link) FTP Cat5e cable power supply over LAN: 42V/ac 200W (allows 5-10 switches i.e 500-1000 m)

6. LAN development and features One large ISP: 60 miles fiber-optic hundreds of miles of LAN high-speed for end-users: 100 Mbps – 1000 Mbps local content: terabytes of music, films, software

7. Current Situation hundreds of ISPs providing high-speed Internet access (from 10 to 1000 Mbps) Block providers – servicing one or couple of blocks; sometimes with as low as 100 customers (and with only 1-2 people support)

8. Pricing and Conditions Current conditions: Unlimited Internet Access at Eur 15 / month (with high speeds ranging from 10 to 1000 Mbps) VPN separate national and international bandwidth (national much higher; gives access to huge libraries of data) free dial-up access numbers VoIP

9. Network structure 8/16 port switches fiber-optic media convertors fiber-optic LAN cables

10. Conclusions Thank you! Contacts for more information: +359-2-4018009 or sip: 2460056 @ sip2go.com veni @ veni.com