12 Jan 2012Slovakia Broadband Overview

The telecommunications market in Slovakia has been fully liberalised since 2003. However, due to high interconnection prices charged by the incumbent operator Slovak Telekom (ST), alternative operators did not enter the market until 2005. In May 2005, seven alternative fixed-line operators signed interconnection deals with ST. Nevertheless, ST is still the dominant player in the market and has held on to its monopoly since it was privatised in mid-2004.

After a significant decline in revenues during the previous years, the fixed line market stabilised in 2008. However, PSTN telephony is being slowly replaced by the VoIP. Even Slovak Telekom, the largest fixed line service provider, is pursuing gradual migration of customers from traditional voice services to the IP based telephony. By the end of June 2011, the incumbent managed to sign up over 92,000 VoIP customers.

In the recent 12 months, Slovakia witnessed a slowdown in broadband take up, experiencing a 17 per cent growth between June 2010 and June 2011 compared to 25 per cent growth in the previous year. Competition in the broadband market is intensifying but the DSL segment remains in the hands of the incumbent. Meanwhile, when it comes to fibre roll-out, Slovakia is among the leading countries in the EU.

In 2010-2011, the regulator continued further market reviews but the progress was slow. The markets of local loop unbundling (LLU), bitstream, and fixed telephony still lack competition.