Bulgaria: an explosion in the high-tech market and mobile connection

In Bulgaria, the mobile connection has supplanted the fixed connection.

© Getty Images / Urbazon

Text by: Damian Vodénitcharov

3 min

Ten years ago Bulgaria was one of the countries with the fastest internet connections.

Today, she is in 53rd place.

And yet, the internet has not slowed down in the country.

On the contrary: the Bulgarian economy is experiencing an IT boom.

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From our correspondent in Sofia

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The connection speed per se has not slowed down

, on the contrary.

Rather, it is the subscriptions that have stopped evolving in recent years, because demand is no longer there.

The national average is almost 90 megabits per second, which seems to be quite satisfactory for most customers.

Innovation in the sector is also at a standstill, after several waves of consolidation of the offer.

This basically means that the big access providers, like the mobile operators, have bought out their smaller competitors.

They thus acquired new users and stimulated their growth.

And the figures show it: there were 2000 access providers 20 years ago, there are only 650 today.

Small local suppliers are becoming increasingly rare in the big cities and especially in Sofia, where a quarter of the Bulgarian population lives.

Today's major providers are two mobile operators who share 60% of the fixed-line connection market. 

Internet market 

Mobile connections are another reason for the stagnation in fixed connection speed. With the advent of the smartphone, a little over a decade ago, individuals lost interest in their fixed connection. Bulgarian mobile networks are among the fastest in the world, and this is what seems to be of particular interest to customers and operators. And the level of investment shows it: 500 million euros were invested in internet connections in 2020, of which 150 were intended for home infrastructure. 

And in parallel to this disrupted internet market, there is the explosion of the high technology sector. In 2020, therefore in the midst of a pandemic, the sector's growth was 10%. And outside the Covid-19 pandemic, it often reaches peaks of around 15%. 3,500 jobs have also been created in high technology, which is far from filling all the vacant positions. The labor shortage is indeed very strong in IT companies.

Eléna Marinova, CEO of one of the big Bulgarian companies, even told me during an interview that there was an urgent need for 10,000 to 20,000 people in the sector.

Salaries are among the highest in the country.

The average remuneration amounts to more than 2,000 euros per month, but it can be as much as double or even more.

For comparison, the average national salary is barely 750 euros.

These companies mainly develop software for export, and according to experts, they are far from having unleashed their full economic potential.

High technologies represent around 4% of GDP today. 

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