Bulgarian Leapfrog
In 2005, you could find netcafes everywhere in Bulgaria. That’s all over now.
The independent internet cybercafes have all closed their doors. Not only in Sofia, but in pretty much every town throughout most of the country.
It seems that in just the past few years, Bulgarians have made the big switch en masse to owning a home computer and getting internet access, not unlike how the Romanian market has evolved during this same period. Advertisements are plastered all over the towns, announcing high speeds at cheap prices.
The internet providers not only put Americans to shame by offering speeds we cannot even buy, but they do it dirt cheap. 16 Mbps for 15€ in Bulgaria. Compare that to the United States, where you can only get a limp 6 Mbps and this slow crawl will set you back a whopping $40 or more each month.
And on top of it all, they provide wifi routers for all their clients by default. Yes, Virginia, a free wifi router –by default– provided by your ISP and preconfigured to be secure. That’s how it ought to be.
The economic impact should become obvious in 5 to 10 years, as Bulgaria leapfrogs from poverty to relative wealth. A strong internet infrastructure, very desirable real estate at growing (though reasonable) prices, and a well-developed tourism industry (Romanians should learn from their neighbors on this issue) all contribute to the boom.
Travel tip: Tourists can forget about finding internet cafes. They’re gone. Not just in the capital, either, but all across Bulgaria the well is dry. You can bring your iPhone or Eee PC and find hundreds of wireless connections on any given block, but you’ll also find out they’re secured.
Unless you’re in country for long period of time and get a 3G laptop modem, the typical tourist should prepare to be confined, largely, to your hotel for internet access. Make the effort to find out if any area eateries offer wifi by chance. Odds are they wont, since laptop-toting clients are still rare. If you get lucky and find one, you’re ahead of the game.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Most Americans isolate themselves from the rest of the world with the thought that because we have it so good here, why bother to look outside of our borders? Even when some do make the effort to travel outside of the “safety net”, they tend to be content to stay in international “chain” hotels or on cruise ships.
While we Americans keep our heads buried in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, once in a while a few of us actually and thankfully pull our heads out of our own cultural abyss to examine what’s going on in other parts of the world.
Your viewpoint is refreshing and most insightful. You prove that if we step outside our isolationist un-reality, we can not only learn from one another but enable ourselves to benefit from our discoveries.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I wish Romanian had that speed for internet and so cheap. I pay about the same amont for like… 2 or 3 mbps… I don’t even know exactly because it is not something you want to remember all the time.
July 24th, 2008 at 4:06 am
For what it’s worth, those speeds are the maximum download speeds achievable when downloading from a Bulgarian web site or from a fellow Bulgarian. As in Romania, there’s the distinction between “Metropolitan” speeds and traffic (which is faster and typically advertised) and traffic for the rest of the Internet (which is far slower and not really advertised). For everything else, the cap is set at 1 Mbps download (or less), with a traffic cap (those guys had a cap of 12 GB in March, everything over 12 GB was taxed extra). Of course, since most of the traffic is typically downloading the newest chalga / movie / latest album from the local file sharing hub, the average Bulgarian won’t actually care about speeds on the rest of the Internet (but if you want to stream something from the ‘net, you definitely feel the difference). In .ro it’s the same story – some ISPs go as far as advertising 100 Mbps for $10 when they’re really offering 512 kbps download speeds from the outside world. But $40 for 6 Mbps? I’m paying less than $30 for 10 Mbps in Romania, and about the same in Bulgaria. And they even threw in a router and an all-you-can-speak phone subscription (in Romania). The former-monopolistic-Romanian-telco is charging about the same for its 8 Mbps package, and they too throw away an all-you-can-speak phone subscription, and some sort of wireless router…
PS: In most places in Bulgaria, they’ll “rent” the wireless router for free. That’s even better than them giving it away to you, since if it breaks, they replace it for you, no questions asked.
June 12th, 2011 at 11:31 pm
OMG, here in New Zealand we have 1.5 Mbps and we think that is wonderful.
6 Mbps would be a dream come true here Lol!