I wasn't expecting Bosnia to have the same infrastructure as the US. Back then especially, that would have been an unfair comparison. What got me wasn't just that the internet was slower. It was this sense that nobody involved seemed in any real rush to make it better.

A slow connection was treated like bad weather. You'd complain about it, wait it out, reboot the modem, call customer support, and in the end you just accepted that this was how things worked.

Twenty years later, the tech has changed. We have fiber in some neighborhoods, 4G in a lot of populated areas, modern smartphones, streaming services, cloud apps, and people trying to run international businesses from home.

But the basic problem hasn't changed nearly enough.

Bosnia and Herzegovina still has one of the least convincing telecom markets in Europe. Mobile internet is where the problem really jumps out. Coverage is spotty, 4G got here embarrassingly late, VoLTE support is still patchy, and commercial 5G is still more of a vague idea than something a normal customer can actually use.

The standard excuse is that Bosnia is a small and complicated country.

That's true, but it's also a handy excuse.

The deeper problem is that Bosnia doesn't really have a healthy telecom market. It has three established telecom setups operating inside the same country, historically linked to different territories, political structures, and ethnic constituencies.

On paper they compete.

In real life, they often seem way more comfortable with things staying as they are.

Three operators in one country, but not a normal market

The three main mobile network operators are BH Telecom, m:tel, and HT Eronet.

On paper, that sounds totally fine. Three mobile operators should be enough to create competition, especially in a country with fewer than four million people.

But Bosnia isn't a normal single market.

BH Telecom has historically been strongest in Bosniak-majority parts of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. HT Eronet has traditionally held its strongest position in Croat-majority areas. M:tel dominates a lot of Republika Srpska.

That doesn't mean every customer picks a provider based on ethnicity, or that the operators are legally boxed into their old territories. All three can sell services more widely than that.

Still, pretending the historical and political split doesn't matter would be silly.

Bosnia's telecom market grew up along a lot of the same fault lines as the country itself. Each big operator developed inside a certain institutional, geographic, and political setting. The result is a market that looks national on a spreadsheet but often acts like three partly separate zones.

If an operator already dominates locally, with its own infrastructure, public-sector contracts, retail stores, brand recognition, and relationships built over decades, how much reason does it really have to kick off a price war?

Not much.

And if all three operators get that same reality, they don't need to sit in a dark room and sign some secret deal. A stagnant market can keep itself going without an actual conspiracy.

Sometimes the most effective cartel is just a cozy setup nobody powerful wants to mess with.

Republika Srpska shows what happens when consolidation goes too far

The situation in Republika Srpska is especially worrying.

M:tel is controlled by Telekom Srbija, the telecom company majority-owned by the Republic of Serbia. Put plainly, a strategically important chunk of Bosnia and Herzegovina's communications infrastructure is controlled through a company owned by a neighboring state.

That alone should spark a serious public debate.

Instead, it's usually treated like a normal corporate ownership footnote.

Over the years, the m:tel group grew by buying up companies and brands like Logosoft, Blicnet, Telrad Net, and Elta-Kabel. Those weren't all the same kind of deal, and those companies didn't all work in exactly the same market segments. Even so, the overall direction is pretty hard to miss.

Potential competitors slowly turned into parts of the same corporate family.

A company can then look like it's competing through a bunch of brands, packages, subsidiaries, and sales channels while most of the money ends up flowing to the same group.

That's not the kind of competition customers need.

I don't care if my bill has a different logo on it when the infrastructure, wholesale access, and corporate control all point back to the same place. Changing the colors on the website isn't competition.

Republika Srpska isn't the only part of Bosnia with concentration problems, but it's a really clear example of how consolidation can gut a market while keeping the look of choice.

The competition authorities signed off on these deals. That doesn't automatically mean the decisions were corrupt or illegal. It does mean the long-term fallout should be looked at honestly.

Did customers get lower prices, better rural coverage, faster upgrades, and more freedom to switch?

Or did the dominant provider just get harder to challenge?

That's the question that actually matters.

Bosnia joined the 4G era in 2019

Bosnia and Herzegovina didn't get commercial 4G service until 2019.

Just sit with that for a second.

By then, 4G wasn't new tech at all. The first commercial LTE networks in Europe had launched almost ten years earlier. Operators in more developed markets were already testing and rolling out 5G.

Bosnia was celebrating something that had been normal somewhere else for years.

This delay wasn't because people lacked smartphones. It wasn't because customers didn't want to use mobile data. It wasn't because physics works differently in the Balkans.

Licensing, spectrum allocation, institutional foot-dragging, and political dysfunction all played a part.

The three established operators got their 4G licenses from the Communications Regulatory Agency in 2019. They started building after that, and coverage got a lot better in cities and along major roads.

That was clearly a good thing. I'm not going to trash 4G just because it showed up late.

But announcing a network and building a network that's actually useful all the time are two different things.

A coverage map can show a big colored blob while telling you almost nothing about what happens inside buildings, down in valleys, on side roads, or in villages where the signal bounces between 4G, 3G, and basically nothing.

People don't use coverage maps. They use phones.

The real test is whether the connection holds up when someone drives out of Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Mostar, or another big city. In a lot of Bosnia, that experience is still hit or miss.

The country's geography does make it harder to build networks. Mountains, valleys, scattered villages, and low population density all drive up the cost of coverage.

But harder isn't the same as impossible.

Norway has tough terrain. Switzerland has mountains. Croatia has islands, mountains, and huge seasonal swings in network demand. None of that stopped those countries from building modern mobile networks.

Bosnia's geography is a challenge. It's not a full explanation.

Mobile internet exposes the real weakness

Fixed broadband stats can hide a lot.

One household might have solid fiber in central Sarajevo while another is stuck on an old copper line just a few kilometers away. Average speeds go up when providers upgrade profitable city neighborhoods, even if suburban and rural users are still stuck with outdated gear.

Mobile internet is harder to fake because people carry the network with them everywhere.

A mobile network should let customers move around the country without constantly thinking about which operator runs which region. Calls shouldn't drop back to older tech for no good reason. Data shouldn't get flaky the second someone leaves downtown.

That's not always what you get in Bosnia.

Quality can swing wildly by operator, municipality, neighborhood, road, even which side of a building you're on. One provider might be great in one town and terrible twenty kilometers down the road. Another might have a strong signal outside but struggle indoors.

Some variation is normal in every country. The size of the variation, and how long it's stuck around, is the problem.

Bosnia has spent years near the bottom of different European broadband and mobile rankings. The exact spot shifts depending on the month, the method, and whether they're measuring fixed or mobile. Saying Bosnia is literally the slowest country in Europe at every single moment would be wrong.

The more careful version is still bad enough: Bosnia has kept landing among Europe's weaker performers, even though the tech needed to fix most of the problem has been widely available.

This isn't 2006 anymore.

Customers aren't impressed just because mobile data technically exists. They expect it to work.

VoLTE should not still feel experimental

VoLTE lets voice calls run over the 4G network instead of kicking the phone back down to 3G or 2G.

This isn't some futuristic extra for telecom nerds. It speeds up call setup, improves voice quality, and lets you keep a modern data connection going during calls. It also makes it easier for operators to shut down older tech down the road and reuse valuable spectrum.

In a grown-up 4G market, VoLTE should be boring.

In Bosnia, it still feels inconsistent.

Whether it works can depend on the operator, the type of plan, the phone model, the firmware, the SIM card, how the account was set up, or whether the person in customer support even knows what you're asking about.

An operator can technically say it offers VoLTE while only supporting a short list of devices or customer types. That checks a box, but it doesn't add up to a reliable nationwide service.

The same goes for Wi-Fi calling, eSIM support, and other stuff that's become routine in a lot of markets.

Bosnian operators often hype basic network upgrades like they're some premium achievement. That pitch might land better if customers didn't know how phones work outside the country.

And then there is 5G

While operators elsewhere in Europe are talking about 5G Standalone, private 5G networks, network slicing, and what's coming with 6G, Bosnia still doesn't have a normal nationwide commercial 5G experience.

There have been tests, demos, equipment announcements, and talk about getting ready for the future. That stuff isn't useless, but it's not a commercial network.

A 5G logo lighting up during a controlled demo doesn't mean a customer can buy a plan, walk outside, and use 5G across any real coverage area.

I also don't think Bosnia needs 5G just because the number is bigger.

A stable, well-built 4G network is more useful than a 5G icon hooked up to weak backhaul. There's no point putting up new radio gear if the base stations are poorly connected, rural coverage is still weak, and customers get tiny data caps.

Still, the lack of commercial 5G says something about the market.

Operators dealing with cutthroat competition usually jump on new network tech to win people over. They race to cover cities, put out independent test results, improve phone support, and offer better plans.

Operators in a comfy market can just wait.

Bosnian consumers have already shown they'll put up with delays because, realistically, where else are they going to go?

The regulator exists, but accountability feels distant

The Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, usually called RAK, handles telecom and broadcasting regulation. It manages spectrum, hands out licenses, adopts rules, and watches parts of the market.

In theory, it's an independent regulator.

The trouble is that no institution in Bosnia works in a political vacuum. Appointments, budgets, laws, and enforcement priorities all live inside a system run by political parties and ethnic power-sharing.

People often go further and claim telecom operators directly pay off political cartels that control the regulator. I get where that suspicion comes from. The ties between public companies, political parties, government appointments, ad budgets, public procurement, and media influence absolutely deserve a hard look.

But suspicion isn't proof, and I'm not going to present direct bribery as an established fact without paperwork to back it up.

The visible problem is already serious enough.

Two of the big operators are tied closely to public ownership setups. The third also works inside a politically sensitive ownership and institutional setup. Political authorities shape the legal framework and the appointment scene around regulatory bodies. Public institutions are themselves huge telecom customers.

That sets up obvious conflicts of interest.

The state is owner, policymaker, customer, and regulator all at once.

When the same political system benefits from operator profits, controls public contracts, and shapes regulatory institutions, tough regulation gets less likely. Even without an illegal order, everyone knows which decisions are politically easy and which ones aren't.

That's how regulatory capture can work. It doesn't always take an envelope of cash. Sometimes it's baked right into the incentives.

When customers complain, they usually get dragged into a slow admin process with the provider first and the regulator later. The individual customer has limited time, limited info, and almost no market power.

The operator has lawyers, engineers, regulatory experts, and years of practice.

That's not an even fight.

A virtual operator is not automatically real competition

Bosnia has seen alternative mobile brands and virtual operator setups. That's better than having zero alternatives.

But an MVNO only brings real competition if it gets fair wholesale access and enough business freedom to actually push back against the network owner.

If a virtual operator depends totally on an incumbent's towers, wholesale prices, tech support, and access terms, its ability to compete might be boxed in from day one.

An MVNO should be able to mix things up with pricing, data bundles, customer service, eSIM activation, roaming, and specialized business services. It shouldn't just exist to stick one more logo in a shopping mall.

Bosnia needs wholesale rules that let independent operators turn into actual competitive threats.

Otherwise, an MVNO is just renting a chair in someone else's casino.

Customers have been trained to expect too little

One reason this setup survives is that expectations stay low.

People compare today's service to what they had five or ten years ago and decide things have gotten better.

Of course things have gotten better. Technology got cheaper, equipment got better, smartphones became universal, and global internet traffic exploded. A telecom operator would have to try pretty hard to deliver exactly the same service it sold in 2010.

The fair comparison isn't Bosnia today versus Bosnia fifteen years ago.

The fair comparison is Bosnia versus countries using the same generation of network tech right now.

Are data caps competitive?

Is 4G coverage solid outside city centers?

Is VoLTE turned on by default on the phones people actually use?

Can customers activate eSIM without pointless red tape?

Are advertised speeds close to real-life speeds?

Can customers get out of a contract without getting punished when the provider keeps failing to deliver?

Can an independent company get fair access to infrastructure?

Those questions paint a much uglier picture.

The solution is a free market, but not the fake version

The obvious fix is competition.

Not competition in political speeches. Not three logos on a government slide deck. Not subsidiaries pretending to compete with their own parent company.

Bosnia needs the kind of competition that makes entrenched operators squirm.

A free market doesn't mean dropping regulation and hoping everything magically sorts itself out. Telecom infrastructure costs a ton to build. Spectrum is limited. Towers need permits. Fiber networks need digging and construction. Dominant operators can make it nearly impossible for anyone new to break in without technically breaking any obvious rule.

So building a real market takes active structural change.

Open the market to a serious fourth operator

Bosnia should make future spectrum handouts transparent and appealing to newcomers, including established European or regional players.

A fourth physical network might be tough to justify in a small country, but it shouldn't be tossed out just because the current operators hate the idea.

Spectrum auctions should reward coverage promises and investment, not just whoever can pay the biggest upfront fee. A new operator could get phased buildout targets, infrastructure-sharing rights, and temporary national roaming while it builds its network.

The point should be to lower the barriers to entry without creating a company that lives on subsidies forever.

Force fair wholesale access

Independent MVNOs need regulated access to existing mobile networks on clear and non-discriminatory terms.

Wholesale prices should be published or checked independently. Technical access should cover modern features like 4G, VoLTE, 5G when it's available, eSIM, and decent quality-of-service terms.

An incumbent shouldn't be able to hand an MVNO a deliberately worse version of the network and then point to its failure as proof that competition doesn't work.

Treat future acquisitions as a market issue, not paperwork

Every new telecom buyout should be judged on what it actually does to local and regional competition.

National market share alone can mislead. An operator might not look dominant across the whole country while controlling pretty much all the meaningful infrastructure in a certain entity, canton, or municipality.

Competition authorities should look at local dominance, shared ownership, wholesale dependence, and the loss of potential future rivals.

In some cases, approval should force the sale of infrastructure, guaranteed wholesale access, or other structural fixes.

And yeah, sometimes the right answer should just be no.

Publish honest coverage and performance data

Operators should have to hand over standardized coverage data that can be checked independently.

RAK should put out interactive maps based not just on operator forecasts but also on real measurements, customer data, and drive tests. Results should include download speed, upload speed, latency, indoor reliability, dropped calls, and VoLTE availability.

Marketing coverage isn't the same as coverage you can actually use.

If public money or regulatory perks help pay for network expansion, the public should be able to see what really got built.

Make switching painless

Number portability has to be fast, predictable, and cheap. Contract terms should be written in plain language regular people can follow.

Customers should be able to walk away without crazy penalties when a provider keeps failing to deliver what it advertised.

eSIM activation should be available remotely where ID rules allow it. Forced store visits and paperwork protect incumbents, not customers.

The harder it is to switch, the less pressure providers feel to get better.

Build infrastructure once and share it

Bosnia doesn't need three separate towers on every hill just to keep up the illusion of independence.

Sharing infrastructure can cut costs and improve rural coverage, as long as it doesn't turn into another way to lock out newcomers.

Municipalities should streamline permits for towers and fiber builds. Public infrastructure like roads, railways, power lines, and utility ducts should be planned together with broadband construction.

When a road gets dug up for work, fiber ducts should go in at the same time. Tearing up the same street over and over because institutions won't talk to each other isn't development. It's expensive theater.

Make RAK institutionally harder to capture

The regulator needs transparent appointments, published voting records, clear conflict-of-interest rules, and detailed explanations for big decisions.

Performance testing should be independent. Enforcement stats should be public. Consumers should be able to see how many complaints came in, how long cases took, what violations were found, and what fines were handed out.

Senior officials should disclose relevant financial and political ties. There should be a real cooling-off period before regulators can go work for companies they used to oversee.

Independence can't just be declared in a law and then assumed forever. It has to be shown.

Separate public ownership from political management

Public ownership isn't automatically bad. A publicly owned telecom can be efficient, innovative, and profitable.

Political management is the problem.

Board seats and executive jobs shouldn't be prizes handed out after elections. Procurement should be transparent. Jobs shouldn't be used as party favors. Company profits shouldn't protect political clout at the cost of investment and competition.

If governments want to stay owners, they should act like professional owners.

If they can't pull that off, then the ownership setup needs to change.

Bosnia does not lack engineers or demand

What frustrates me most is that Bosnia isn't short on technical talent.

The country has developers, network engineers, sysadmins, security folks, entrepreneurs, and remote workers serving clients all over the world. A lot of them know modern infrastructure cold because they deal with it every day.

Bosnia isn't short on demand either.

People stream video, work remotely, use cloud software, run online businesses, talk to family abroad, and rely on mobile connections for daily life. Tourists expect mobile data. Folks from the diaspora notice the difference in networks right away.

What's missing is pressure.

The current operators have had too little reason to be scared of losing customers. Regulators have faced too little pressure to show measurable results. Political institutions have gotten too much mileage out of keeping control.

That's why technical progress has shown up late and unevenly.

The uncomfortable conclusion

Bosnia's internet problem isn't really an internet problem.

It's a market problem, a regulatory problem, and in the end a political problem.

The cables and antennas can be put in. Spectrum can be handed out. VoLTE can be switched on. 5G gear can be bought. None of that is mystery tech.

The hard part is building a system where powerful operators are forced to compete and regulators are forced to regulate.

Free-market competition is the answer, but Bosnia won't get it by sitting around waiting for the current telecom groups to voluntarily give up their own advantages.

It will take transparent spectrum policy, serious merger control, fair wholesale access, easier switching, independent performance tests, infrastructure sharing, and a regulator that expects to get questioned.

It might also take pressure from the European Union, international financial institutions, civil society, businesses, and customers who quit treating bad service like a natural part of the country.

Bosnia joined the 4G era late. It shouldn't make that same mistake again with 5G, network upgrades, and the next wave of digital infrastructure.

Twenty years ago, slow internet in Bosnia shocked me.

What shocks me now is how many powerful people still seem fine with it.

Sources

• Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Bosnia and Herzegovina - the last European Country with 4G is Not Ready for 5G

• Licenses for the Fourth Generation of Mobile Telephony (4G) Allocated

• Ookla Speedtest Global Index

• Speedtest Global Index: Bosnia and Herzegovina

• International Telecommunication Union DataHub

• World Bank: Fixed broadband subscriptions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• World Bank: Mobile cellular subscriptions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• European Commission: Bosnia and Herzegovina Report 2025

• Telekom Srbija annual reports and ownership information

• M:tel corporate information

• BH Telecom corporate information

• HT Eronet corporate information

• Competition Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Noel’s Blog