MAP > Internet Providers in Albania

Albania’s telecom market has been very consistent with the growth elsewhere in this region with the fixed telephony penetration declining as the subscribers migrate to the mobile solutions and with the ongoing government efforts to be able to improve the broadband availability as well as access conditions. To this far, the regulator has recently imposed the LLU and the bitstream access on incumbent telco Albtelecom.

This country’s small economy has been highly dependent on key trading partners of Greece and Italy. Former is still struggling to be able to develop some growth while later still faces continuing austerity measures.

Economic considerations had experienced a marked impact on the Albania’s telecom sector with the revenue growth has declined for some years before it showed the marginal recovery from the year 2014. Penetration in fixed line and the broadband sectors have remained low judging by the international standards. Despite the regulatory obstacles remaining, the low penetration offers opportunities for further investment in the network upgrades to aid in propelling country’s economic growth through the digital offerings as well as the IP based technologies and the services. Well, such investment in the fixed line infrastructure has been encouraged by regulator through the amended access measures and by the government through their funding facilities. But, as the mobile network infrastructure goes through enhancement, the consumers are going to prefer this platform for the voice as well as the data services, and hence this mobile sector is going to focus for the future growth in the overall market.

The recent developments in the telecom sector do include the proposed sale of the Telekom Albania with the Telekom Srbija among the bidders that are aiming to be able to increase their presence in the Balkan region. The country has very long-sought accession to the European Union that has benefitted the telecom sector through closer scrutiny of the regulatory regime and through injection of the funding to aid in modernizing the infrastructure.

Albania went ahead and signed the Stabilization and the Association Agreement with European Union that came into effect in the mid-2009. As part of European Union pre- accession process, Albania has been able to receive some financial aid to be able to build the public institutions and also to enhance the cross border cooperation under EU’s instrument for the Pre- Accession Assistance funding mechanism. This country has been known as the candidate county for the accession to EU since June 2014.