Internet access

Every household in Serbia should have access to "high-speed internet" by 2020, which would raise the GDP by 1-1.5 percent.

That's according to Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajic, who spoke on Tuesday.

Broadband access for cell phone users is particularly pricey in Greece, as a European Commission survey has shown that Greek mobile networks have made internet access by cell phone about 90 percent more expensive than the European Union average.

Advanced 4G technologies, dubbed 4.5G technologies, were set to come online in Turkey in the early hours of April 1 after months of preparation, according to the country's communications minister. Mobile internet speed is expected to accelerate by 10 times with the launch of the new technologies. 

Turkcell tested its new 4.5G Internet speed of 925 Mbps during the Turkcell Technology Summit in Istanbul with success on March 9, with the participation of Turkcell Vice President ?lker Kuruöz. 

Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzio?lu has called on the government to lower taxes placed on the telecommunications industry and remove obstacles to investments for the rapid increase of Internet penetration.

The number of Bulgarian households with access to the Internet at home has increased, reaching nearly 60% in 2015, a new survey has shown.   

A survey conducted by Bulgaria's statistical office NSI among 9,011 individuals aged 16 - 74 showed that 59.1% of 4,085 interviewed households had access to the Internet at home this year, an increase of 2.4 percentage points compared to 2014.

The municipality of Ordu in Turkey's northern coastal province has been providing residents with free Wi-Fi access for the past month, without any limit on data usage.

In remarks made to Anadolu Agency on Nov. 11, Ordu Metropolitan Mayor Enver Y?lmaz said the municipality put into service the largest free internet access network in Turkey.

The development of the SAS in Nemea, Peloponnese, will be a key infrastructure milestone for EAN, which was unveiled by Inmarsat last month as the first aviation passenger connectivity solution in Europe to combine an advanced satellite network and LTE-based ground network, the latter of which will be operated by Deutsche Telekom.

Bulgaria has overtaken South Korea as "the country with the highest broadband adoption rate at 96%," a report by world-leading cloud services provider Akamai shows.

By Vangelis Mandravelis

The average cost of a combined connection to a land line, a mobile line and broadband Internet amounts to 4.8 percent of the average annual income of Greek citizens, according to a survey by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).