Review article
https://doi.org/10.22586/csp.v52i1.9927
The Development Characteristics of Public Telephony in Croatia from 1990 to 1998
Goran Rajič
; echnical Museum Nikola Tesla, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
After the independence of the Republic of Croatia was declared in 1991, the newly-formed national postal and telecommunications company HPT (Croatian Post and Telecommunications) found itself in an unenviable position. Croatia was in the group of countries at the forefront of telecommunications development in Europe. In 1990, it had only 17 telephone connections per 100 inhabitants. However, in the next eight years it moved closer to the European average, doubling its capacity to 35 telephone lines per 100 inhabitants by 1999. It did so despite the devastation of the Homeland War and the enormous damage suffered by its public telephone network. Croatia managed to negate the telecommunications blockade by finding alternative telecommunication routes, and then set out to build an efficient telephony and transmission system based on the use of fibre-optic cables and modern switching equipment. By the end of 1993, international switching hubs in Zagreb, Split, Rijeka, and Đakovo using AXE 10 technology were built, and the following year cities on the Croatian Adriatic coast were connected with cities in continental Croatia by fibre-optic cable. During this process, Croatia received its one-millionth telephone subscriber. Thanks to its participation in the TEL (Trans Europe Line) project, it became part of the telecommunication bridge between Eastern and Western Europe. In addition to the fixed public telephone network, it simultaneously developed a mobile public telephone network, first an analogue mobile network aptly named MOBITEL in 1991, and then the CRONET digital mobile network in 1996. These steps resulted in a significant increase in telephone traffic and the widespread availability of fixed and mobile telephone connections, which completely revolutionised public telephony in Croatia.
Keywords
telephone; telephony; mobile phone; telecommunications; HPT (Croatian Post and Telecommunications)
Hrčak ID:
236506
URI
Publication date:
31.3.2020.
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