Telecommunications in Serbia


Telecommunication in Serbia is an important economic sector, accounting for 4.7% of country's GDP in 2015.

Telephony

Serbia has a developed and efficient telephone network infrastructure. Domestic line system is 100% digital, with digital cable trunk line connecting switching centers. A drop in fixed-line connections in the last decade has been more than offset by a sharp increase in mobile-cellular telephone use. Telekom Srbija, the former state monopoly, is the predominant player in landline telephony with 93.8% of market share. Since the liberalization of the telecommunications market in 2013, Telekom Srbija has been very slowly losing market share to 16 other telecom operators, of which the most significant ones include SBB and Orion Telekom.

Mobile telephony

Serbia currently has three mobile networks, Telekom Srbija, Telenor, and Vip mobile all of which are licensed for 2G GSM, 3G UMTS, and 4G LTE. The largest mobile operator is Telekom Srbija, marketed as mts, with 46.8% market share, followed by Telenor with 31.2% and Vip mobile with 22% market share. In addition, SBB gained mobile virtual network operator licence in 2013 but is still not offering services.

Radio and television

has been completed in 2015 with MPEG-4 compression standard and DVB-T2 standard for signal transmission.

Pay television

Some 67% of households are provided with pay television services. There are 90 pay television operators, largest of which are SBB with 48% market share, Telekom Srbija with 25%, followed by PoštaNet with 5%, and Ikom and Kopernikus with 4% and 3%, respectively.

IT Industry

The Serbian IT industry is rapidly growing and changing pace. In 2018, IT services exports reached $1.3 billion. With 6,924 companies in the IT sector, Belgrade is one of the information technology centers in this part of Europe, with strong growth. Microsoft Development Center located in Belgrade was at the time of its establishment fifth such center in the world. Many world IT companies choose Belgrade as regional or European center such as Asus, Intel, Dell, Huawei, NCR, Ubisoft etc. These companies have taken advantage of Serbia's large pool of engineers and relatively low wages.
Large investments by global tech companies like Microsoft, typical of the 2000s, are being eclipsed by a growing number of domestic startups which obtain funding from domestic and international investors. What brought companies like Microsoft in the first place was a large pool of talented engineers and mathematicians. In just the first quarter of 2016, more than US$65 million has been raised by Serbian startups including $45 million for Seven Bridges and $14 million for Vast. One of the most successful startups have been Nordeus which was founded in Belgrade in 2010 and is one of Europe's fastest-growing companies in the field of computer games.

Internet