Jelena Cosic

A SEE 11 Story - The Evolution of the Balkan Telecommunications Market

Jelena Cosic

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SEE 11 - our next regional meeting for South East Europe - takes place in Split, Croatia from 4-5 April. Following the fascinating discussion that took place at the last SEE meeting, we'll be picking up the story of the development of the region's Internet right where we left off. Here's a quick look at what to expect!


In three weeks time, people from across the Internet community will once again gather to talk about the current level of development of the Internet in countries across South East Europe and its capacity for future growth. We invite technical experts, government representatives, RIPE NCC members, and anyone else working toward the good of the Internet to come share your insights and raise your questions!

Register for SEE 11

Current topics on the agenda for SEE 11 include challenges in BGP security, approaches in measuring Internet performance and latency, peering, and updates from local IXPs. In addition to this, we would especially like to invite the community to come take part in an ongoing discussion about the past and present state of the SEE Internet.

The SEE telecommunications market - evolution and trends

At the last SEE meeting, we dived into the history of computer networking and the Internet in former Yugoslavia. Local pioneers joined us in Ljubljana to share their stories of what it took to bring the Internet to the country and the challenges they faced during those turbulent years. Here's a quick look at a few moments from that panel discussion:

Moments from the panel discussion on the History of the Yugoslavian Internet at SEE 10 (see full recording)

At SEE 11, we'll be picking the story up right where we left off. Together with the local community, we'll be exploring the growth of the region's Internet beyond those challenging early years, with a particular focus on discussing how certain economical and political factors have continued to shape its evolution.

In preparation for that discussion, one of the interesting trends we've been looking into is that of consolidation. During the meeting, we'll be presenting an overview of the way consolidation has played out for the telecommunications market in the Balkans, and how the several large telecommunications companies who own the majority of the region's Internet address space have been contributing to growth in terms of, for example, IPv6 and RPKI deployment.

There are number of factors that drive telecommunication companies to consolidate, such as increased competition, cost saving through the economies of scale, diversification, convergence, and regulatory changes. As well as tracing which such factors have led to the current state of affairs, we will also focus on the consequences of consolidation in the region.

More broadly, by opening up this conversation with the SEE community, we hope that everyone who takes part will arrive at a deeper understanding of the impact market dynamics have on resource distribution, technology adoption, routing decision, investment planning, and so on.

We are very much looking forward to learning more from the community on these matters, and we hope those of you with an interest in these topics will join us.

More details

joinus_see11

You can see the full agenda for the meeting and get details on how to register for SEE 11 over on the website.

As with all of our regional meetings, SEE meetings are a great opportunity to share insights into technical, administrative and policy issues that impact RIPE NCC members and industry organisations in the region. In addition to the discussion of important local development and issues, RIPE NCC staff will be there to answer your questions and provide more information on RIPE and RIPE NCC related matters.


Sources for visualisation:

  • APNIC statistics: https://stats.labs.apnic.net/aspop
  • United Group: https://united.group/about/
  • Deutsche Telecom: https://www.telekom.com/en/company/companyprofile/company-profile-625808
  • Telekom Srbija (via wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telekom_Srbija
  • A1: https://www.a1.group/en/home
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About the author

Jelena Cosic Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Jelena is a long time member of the Internet governance community in the SEE region. As part of her work with ISOC and PCH, she supported local initiatives like: hackerspaces, IXPs, NOGs, local and regional IG meetings. She is currently working as a Community Builder for RIPE NCC focusing on the SEE region.

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