Internet access

The "Agriculture" State Fund announced a tender for projects for the building up broadband Internet network in villages and small towns in Bulgaria. A separate budget worth of BGN 82 million  is allocated for financing of the projects. These are funds provided under the Rural Development Program and the aim of the projects is to achieve 100% coverage of the country with fast internet.

A family of four with a fixed-line broadband internet connection and each household member having a mobile phone on average spent 3,736 Turkish Liras (around $500) on communication in 2020.

Households' mobile phone costs, including taxes, averaged some 43 liras per month, according a report by the Turkish Competitive Telco Operators' Association (TELKODER).

SpaceX, the space company of high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, plans to make its Starlink broadband satellite internet service available in Greece in the first quarter of 2021, Kathimerini reports.

The gap between the internet speeds that service providers advertise and actual speeds remain a problem not only for Greek users but also for all their European counterparts too. Often a double-play program with an internet and landline connection that is supposed to offer a speed of 24 megabits per second is restricted to just 3 Mbps.

Nineteen organisations from Southeast Europe have joined forces in a newly-established network that aims to advance the protection of digital rights and address the growing challenges posed by the widespread use of advanced technologies in society.

Daily internet traffic in Turkey has surged by 50 percent during the coronavirus outbreak in the country as people heed stay-at-home orders, with many working from their houses and getting schooled online, the CEO of a major telecom company has said.

The Romanian capital, Bucharest, tops the list, followed by Houston, Las Vegas and Atlanta, all in the US. The Hungarian capital, Budapest, came in fourth, ahead of San Francisco.

Turkey's mobile telephone users will enjoy 1-gigabyte data of free internet during the holy month of Ramadan, the country's transport and infrastructure minister has announced.

The government has made the necessary arrangement for free internet access with the mobile phone operators, Adil Karaismailoğlu said.

Greece's telecommunication networks have responded well to the pandemic crisis so far. Despite the increase in traffic coming to at least 50 percent, as noted by British consultancy Tech4i2, the slowdown in internet speeds around the country has been the smallest compared to networks elsewhere in Europe.

Greeks are showing little interest in the fiber optic internet connections being offered under the SuperFast BroadBand (SFBB) program.