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I grew up in the United States, so when I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina roughly twenty years ago, the internet situation was a genuine shock.
I did not expect Bosnia to have the same infrastructure as the US. That would have been an unreasonable comparison, especially at the time. What surprised me was not simply that the internet was slower. It was the feeling that nobody involved was in any particular hurry to improve it.
Slow connections were treated like bad weather. You complained, waited, restarted the modem, called customer support, and eventually accepted that this was just how things worked.
Two decades later, the technology has changed. We have fiber in some neighborhoods, 4G in many populated areas, modern smartphones, streaming services, cloud applications, and people trying to run international businesses from home.
But the basic problem has not changed nearly enough.
Bosnia and Herzegovina still has one of the least convincing telecommunications markets in Europe. Mobile internet is where the problem becomes especially obvious. Coverage is inconsistent, 4G arrived embarrassingly late, VoLTE support remains fragmented, and commercial 5G is still more of an abstract concept than something an ordinary customer can actually use.
The usual explanation is that Bosnia is a small and complicated country.
That is true, but it is also a convenient excuse.
The deeper issue is that Bosnia does not really have a healthy telecom market. It has three established telecom ecosystems operating inside the same country, historically tied to different territories, political structures, and ethnic constituencies.
They technically compete.
In practice, they often seem far more comfortable with the status quo.
The three main mobile network operators are BH Telecom, m:tel, and HT Eronet.
On paper, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Three mobile operators should be enough to create competition, particularly in a country with fewer than four million people.
But Bosnia is not 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 had its strongest position in Croat-majority areas. M:tel dominates much of Republika Srpska.
This does not mean that every customer chooses a provider according to ethnicity, or that the operators are legally restricted to their traditional territories. All three can sell services more broadly.
Still, pretending that the historical and political division does not matter would be ridiculous.
Bosnia’s telecom market developed along many of the same fault lines as the state itself. Each major operator grew inside a particular institutional, geographic, and political environment. The result is a market that looks national on a spreadsheet but often behaves like three partially separated zones.
If an operator already has a dominant local position, its own infrastructure, public-sector contracts, retail stores, brand recognition, and relationships built over decades, how much incentive does it really have to start a price war?
Not much.
And if all three operators understand the same reality, they do not need to sit in a dark room and sign a secret agreement. A stagnant market can maintain itself without an explicit conspiracy.
Sometimes the most effective cartel is simply a comfortable arrangement nobody powerful wants to disturb.
The situation in Republika Srpska is especially concerning.
M:tel is controlled by Telekom Srbija, the telecommunications company majority-owned by the Republic of Serbia. In other words, a strategically important part of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s communications infrastructure is controlled through a company owned by a neighboring state.
That should at least produce a serious public discussion.
Instead, it is usually treated as an ordinary corporate ownership detail.
Over the years, the m:tel group expanded through acquisitions involving companies and brands such as Logosoft, Blicnet, Telrad Net, and Elta-Kabel. These were not all identical transactions, and the companies did not all operate in exactly the same market segments. Still, the overall direction is hard to miss.
Potential competitors gradually became parts of the same corporate ecosystem.
A company can then appear to compete through multiple brands, packages, subsidiaries, and sales channels while much of the revenue ultimately flows toward the same group.
That is not the kind of competition customers need.
I do not care whether my bill has a different logo if the infrastructure, wholesale access, and corporate control lead back to the same place. Changing the color of the website is not competition.
Republika Srpska is not the only part of Bosnia with concentration problems, but it provides a particularly clear example of how consolidation can hollow out a market while preserving the appearance of choice.
The competition authorities approved these transactions. That does not automatically mean the decisions were corrupt or illegal. It does mean the long-term effect should be examined honestly.
Did customers receive lower prices, better rural coverage, faster upgrades, and more freedom to switch?
Or did the dominant provider simply become harder to challenge?
That is the question that matters.
Bosnia and Herzegovina did not receive commercial 4G service until 2019.
Let that sink in.
By that point, 4G was not new technology. The first commercial LTE networks in Europe had launched almost a decade earlier. Operators in more developed markets were already testing and deploying 5G.
Bosnia was celebrating something that had become normal elsewhere years before.
This delay was not caused by a lack of smartphones. It was not caused by customers refusing to use mobile data. It was not because the laws of physics function differently in the Balkans.
Licensing, spectrum allocation, institutional delay, and political dysfunction all played a role.
The three established operators received 4G licenses from the Communications Regulatory Agency in 2019. Deployment followed, and coverage improved considerably in cities and along major roads.
That was obviously positive. I am not going to criticize 4G simply because it arrived late.
But announcing a network and building a consistently useful network are not the same thing.
A coverage map can show a large colored area while saying very little about what happens inside buildings, in valleys, on secondary roads, or in villages where the signal jumps between 4G, 3G, and nothing useful.
People do not use coverage maps. They use phones.
The real test is whether a connection remains stable when someone leaves Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Mostar, or another major urban area. In many parts of Bosnia, that experience remains unpredictable.
The country’s geography makes network deployment more difficult. Mountains, valleys, scattered settlements, and low population density increase the cost of coverage.
But difficult is not the same as impossible.
Norway has difficult terrain. Switzerland has mountains. Croatia has islands, mountains, and large seasonal changes in network demand. None of this prevented those countries from building modern mobile networks.
Bosnia’s geography is a challenge. It is not a complete explanation.
Fixed broadband statistics can hide a lot.
One household may have a good fiber connection in central Sarajevo while another relies on an old copper line a few kilometers away. Average speeds improve when providers upgrade profitable urban neighborhoods, even if rural and suburban users remain stuck with outdated infrastructure.
Mobile internet is harder to disguise because people carry the network around with them.
A mobile network should allow customers to move across the country without constantly thinking about which operator dominates which region. Calls should not fall back to older network technology unnecessarily. Data should not become unreliable the moment someone leaves a city center.
That is not always the experience in Bosnia.
The quality can vary dramatically by operator, municipality, neighborhood, road, and even the side of a building. One provider may work well in a specific town but perform badly twenty kilometers away. Another may offer a strong outdoor signal but struggle indoors.
Some variation is normal in every country. The scale and persistence of the variation are the problem.
Bosnia has spent years near the bottom of various European broadband and mobile connectivity comparisons. The exact ranking changes depending on the month, methodology, and whether the measurement covers fixed or mobile connections. Calling Bosnia literally the slowest country in Europe at every moment would be inaccurate.
The more defensible conclusion is still bad enough: Bosnia has repeatedly remained among Europe’s weaker performers, despite the technology needed to fix much of the problem being widely available.
This is not 2006 anymore.
Customers are not impressed by the fact that mobile data technically exists. They expect it to work.
VoLTE allows voice calls to use the 4G network instead of forcing the phone to fall back to 3G or 2G.
This is not some futuristic feature for telecom enthusiasts. It improves call setup times, voice quality, and the ability to maintain a modern data connection during calls. It also makes it easier for operators to eventually retire older network technology and reuse valuable spectrum.
In a mature 4G market, VoLTE should be boring.
In Bosnia, it still feels inconsistent.
Support may depend on the operator, subscription type, device model, firmware, SIM card, provisioning status, or whether someone in customer support understands what the customer is asking about.
An operator can technically claim to offer VoLTE while supporting only a limited selection of devices or customer categories. That checks a box, but it does not create a dependable nationwide service.
The same applies to Wi-Fi calling, eSIM support, and other features that have become routine in many markets.
Bosnian operators often present basic network modernization as a premium achievement. That marketing might work better if customers did not know how phones operate outside the country.
While European operators are discussing 5G Standalone, private 5G networks, network slicing, and the future of 6G, Bosnia still does not have a normal nationwide commercial 5G experience.
There have been tests, demonstrations, equipment announcements, and conversations about future readiness. Those things are not worthless, but they are not a commercial network.
A 5G logo displayed during a controlled demonstration does not mean a customer can buy a plan, walk outside, and use 5G across a meaningful coverage area.
I also do not believe Bosnia needs 5G merely because the number is higher.
A stable and well-designed 4G network is more useful than a 5G icon connected to inadequate backhaul. There is no point installing new radio equipment if base stations are poorly connected, rural coverage remains weak, and customers receive tiny data allowances.
Still, the absence of commercial 5G says something about the market.
Operators facing aggressive competition usually use new network technology to attract customers. They race to cover cities, publish independent test results, improve device support, and offer better plans.
Operators in a comfortable market can wait.
Bosnian consumers have already demonstrated that they will tolerate delays because, realistically, where else are they going to go?
The Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, usually known as RAK, is responsible for regulating telecommunications and broadcasting. It manages spectrum, issues licenses, adopts rules, and monitors parts of the market.
In theory, it is an independent regulator.
The problem is that no institution in Bosnia operates in a political vacuum. Appointments, budgets, laws, and enforcement priorities exist inside a system dominated by political parties and ethnic power-sharing.
People often go one step further and claim that telecom operators directly pay political cartels that control the regulator. I understand where that suspicion comes from. The relationships between public companies, political parties, government appointments, advertising budgets, public procurement, and media influence deserve serious scrutiny.
But suspicion is not evidence, and I am not going to present direct bribery as a proven fact without documentation.
The visible problem is already serious enough.
Two of the major operators are deeply connected to public ownership structures. The third also operates within a politically sensitive ownership and institutional environment. Political authorities influence the legal framework and the appointment environment around regulatory bodies. Public institutions are themselves major telecom customers.
That creates obvious conflicts of interest.
The state is simultaneously an owner, policymaker, customer, and regulator.
When the same political system benefits from operator profits, controls public contracts, and shapes regulatory institutions, aggressive regulation becomes less likely. Even without an illegal instruction, everyone understands which decisions are politically easy and which are not.
This is how regulatory capture can work. It does not always require an envelope of cash. Sometimes it is built into the incentives.
When customers complain, they usually enter a slow administrative process involving the provider first and the regulator later. The individual customer has limited time, limited information, and almost no market power.
The operator has lawyers, engineers, regulatory specialists, and years of experience.
That is not a balanced relationship.
Bosnia has seen alternative mobile brands and virtual operator arrangements. This is better than having no alternatives at all.
But an MVNO only creates meaningful competition if it receives fair wholesale access and enough commercial freedom to challenge the network owner.
If a virtual operator depends completely on an incumbent’s infrastructure, wholesale pricing, technical support, and access conditions, its ability to compete may be limited from the beginning.
An MVNO should be able to innovate on pricing, data packages, customer service, eSIM activation, roaming, and specialized business services. It should not exist merely to create one more logo in a shopping mall.
Bosnia needs wholesale rules that allow independent operators to become genuine competitive threats.
Otherwise, an MVNO is renting a chair in somebody else’s casino.
One reason this system survives is that expectations remain low.
People compare their current service to what they had five or ten years ago and conclude that the situation has improved.
Of course it has improved. Technology became cheaper, equipment improved, smartphones became universal, and global internet traffic exploded. A telecom operator would need to make an active effort to provide exactly the same service it offered in 2010.
The relevant comparison is not Bosnia today against Bosnia fifteen years ago.
The relevant comparison is Bosnia against countries using the same generation of network technology today.
Are data allowances competitive?
Is 4G coverage dependable outside urban centers?
Is VoLTE enabled by default on commonly used phones?
Can customers activate eSIM without unnecessary bureaucracy?
Are advertised speeds close to real-world speeds?
Can customers leave a contract without being punished when the provider repeatedly fails to deliver?
Can an independent company obtain fair access to infrastructure?
Those questions produce a much less flattering picture.
The obvious solution is competition.
Not competition in political speeches. Not three logos on a government presentation. Not subsidiaries pretending to compete with their parent company.
Bosnia needs the kind of competition that makes established operators uncomfortable.
A free market does not mean abandoning regulation and hoping everything magically fixes itself. Telecom infrastructure has extremely high entry costs. Spectrum is limited. Towers require permits. Fiber networks require construction. Dominant operators can make market entry almost impossible without technically breaking any obvious rule.
Creating a real market therefore requires active structural reform.
Bosnia should make future spectrum allocation transparent and attractive to new entrants, including established European or regional operators.
A fourth physical network might be difficult to justify in a small country, but it should not be ruled out simply because the current operators dislike the idea.
Spectrum auctions should reward coverage commitments and investment, not merely the ability to pay the highest initial fee. A new operator could receive phased coverage requirements, infrastructure-sharing rights, and temporary national roaming while building its network.
The goal should be to reduce entry barriers without creating a permanently subsidized company.
Independent MVNOs need regulated access to existing mobile networks under transparent and nondiscriminatory conditions.
Wholesale prices should be published or independently reviewed. Technical access should include modern features such as 4G, VoLTE, 5G when available, eSIM, and reasonable quality-of-service terms.
An incumbent should not be able to offer an MVNO a deliberately inferior version of the network and then point to its failure as proof that competition does not work.
Every new telecom acquisition should be evaluated based on its practical effect on local and regional competition.
National market share alone can be misleading. An operator might not appear dominant across the entire country while controlling nearly all meaningful infrastructure in a particular entity, canton, or municipality.
Competition authorities should examine local dominance, shared ownership, wholesale dependencies, and the loss of potential future competitors.
In some cases, approval should require the sale of infrastructure, guaranteed wholesale access, or other structural remedies.
And yes, sometimes the correct answer should simply be no.
Operators should be required to provide standardized coverage data that can be independently verified.
RAK should publish interactive maps based not only on operator predictions but also on measurements, customer data, and drive testing. Results should include download speed, upload speed, latency, indoor reliability, dropped calls, and VoLTE availability.
Marketing coverage is not the same as usable coverage.
If public money or regulatory privileges support network expansion, the public should be able to see what was actually built.
Number portability must be fast, predictable, and inexpensive. Contract terms should be written in language ordinary people can understand.
Customers should be able to leave without excessive penalties when a provider repeatedly fails to deliver the advertised service.
eSIM activation should be available remotely where identity rules permit it. Artificial store visits and paperwork protect incumbents, not customers.
The harder it is to switch, the less pressure providers feel to improve.
Bosnia does not need three separate towers on every hill just to preserve the illusion of independence.
Infrastructure sharing can lower costs and improve rural coverage, provided it does not become another method of excluding newcomers.
Municipalities should simplify permits for towers and fiber deployment. Public infrastructure such as roads, railways, power routes, and utility ducts should be coordinated with broadband construction.
When a road is opened for construction, fiber ducts should be installed at the same time. Digging up the same street repeatedly because institutions refuse to communicate is not development. It is expensive theater.
The regulator needs transparent appointments, published voting records, clear conflict-of-interest rules, and detailed explanations for major decisions.
Performance testing should be independent. Enforcement statistics should be public. Consumers should be able to see how many complaints were received, how long cases took, what violations were found, and what penalties were imposed.
Senior officials should disclose relevant financial and political ties. A meaningful cooling-off period should apply before regulators can work for companies they supervised.
Independence cannot be declared in a law and then assumed to exist forever. It has to be demonstrated.
Public ownership is not automatically bad. A publicly owned telecom company can be efficient, innovative, and profitable.
Political management is the problem.
Boards and executives should not be rewards distributed after elections. Procurement should be transparent. Employment should not be used as a party patronage system. Company profits should not protect political influence at the expense of investment and competition.
If governments want to remain owners, they should act like professional owners.
If they cannot do that, then the ownership structure needs to change.
What frustrates me most is that Bosnia does not lack technical talent.
The country has developers, network engineers, system administrators, security specialists, entrepreneurs, and remote workers serving clients around the world. Many understand modern infrastructure perfectly well because they work with it every day.
Bosnia also does not lack demand.
People stream video, work remotely, use cloud software, run online businesses, communicate with family abroad, and depend on mobile connectivity for ordinary life. Tourists expect mobile data. Diaspora visitors immediately notice the difference between networks.
The missing ingredient is pressure.
The current operators have had too little reason to fear losing customers. Regulators have faced too little pressure to produce measurable results. Political institutions have benefited too much from preserving control.
That is why technical progress has arrived late and unevenly.
Bosnia’s internet problem is not really an internet problem.
It is a market problem, a regulatory problem, and ultimately a political problem.
The cables and antennas can be installed. Spectrum can be allocated. VoLTE can be activated. 5G equipment can be purchased. None of this is mysterious technology.
The difficult part is building a system in which powerful operators are forced to compete and regulators are forced to regulate.
Free-market competition is the answer, but Bosnia will not get it by waiting for the existing telecom groups to voluntarily weaken their own positions.
It will require transparent spectrum policy, serious merger control, fair wholesale access, easier switching, independent performance measurements, infrastructure sharing, and a regulator that expects to be questioned.
It may also require pressure from the European Union, international financial institutions, civil society, businesses, and customers who stop treating poor service as a natural feature of the country.
Bosnia joined the 4G era late. It should not repeat the same mistake with 5G, network modernization, and the next generation of digital infrastructure.
Twenty years ago, slow internet in Bosnia shocked me.
What shocks me now is how many people with power still appear comfortable with it.
I did not expect Bosnia to have the same infrastructure as the US. That would have been an unreasonable comparison, especially at the time. What surprised me was not simply that the internet was slower. It was the feeling that nobody involved was in any particular hurry to improve it.
Slow connections were treated like bad weather. You complained, waited, restarted the modem, called customer support, and eventually accepted that this was just how things worked.
Two decades later, the technology has changed. We have fiber in some neighborhoods, 4G in many populated areas, modern smartphones, streaming services, cloud applications, and people trying to run international businesses from home.
But the basic problem has not changed nearly enough.
Bosnia and Herzegovina still has one of the least convincing telecommunications markets in Europe. Mobile internet is where the problem becomes especially obvious. Coverage is inconsistent, 4G arrived embarrassingly late, VoLTE support remains fragmented, and commercial 5G is still more of an abstract concept than something an ordinary customer can actually use.
The usual explanation is that Bosnia is a small and complicated country.
That is true, but it is also a convenient excuse.
The deeper issue is that Bosnia does not really have a healthy telecom market. It has three established telecom ecosystems operating inside the same country, historically tied to different territories, political structures, and ethnic constituencies.
They technically compete.
In practice, they often seem far more comfortable with the status quo.
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 perfectly reasonable. Three mobile operators should be enough to create competition, particularly in a country with fewer than four million people.
But Bosnia is not 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 had its strongest position in Croat-majority areas. M:tel dominates much of Republika Srpska.
This does not mean that every customer chooses a provider according to ethnicity, or that the operators are legally restricted to their traditional territories. All three can sell services more broadly.
Still, pretending that the historical and political division does not matter would be ridiculous.
Bosnia’s telecom market developed along many of the same fault lines as the state itself. Each major operator grew inside a particular institutional, geographic, and political environment. The result is a market that looks national on a spreadsheet but often behaves like three partially separated zones.
If an operator already has a dominant local position, its own infrastructure, public-sector contracts, retail stores, brand recognition, and relationships built over decades, how much incentive does it really have to start a price war?
Not much.
And if all three operators understand the same reality, they do not need to sit in a dark room and sign a secret agreement. A stagnant market can maintain itself without an explicit conspiracy.
Sometimes the most effective cartel is simply a comfortable arrangement nobody powerful wants to disturb.
Republika Srpska shows what happens when consolidation goes too far
The situation in Republika Srpska is especially concerning.
M:tel is controlled by Telekom Srbija, the telecommunications company majority-owned by the Republic of Serbia. In other words, a strategically important part of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s communications infrastructure is controlled through a company owned by a neighboring state.
That should at least produce a serious public discussion.
Instead, it is usually treated as an ordinary corporate ownership detail.
Over the years, the m:tel group expanded through acquisitions involving companies and brands such as Logosoft, Blicnet, Telrad Net, and Elta-Kabel. These were not all identical transactions, and the companies did not all operate in exactly the same market segments. Still, the overall direction is hard to miss.
Potential competitors gradually became parts of the same corporate ecosystem.
A company can then appear to compete through multiple brands, packages, subsidiaries, and sales channels while much of the revenue ultimately flows toward the same group.
That is not the kind of competition customers need.
I do not care whether my bill has a different logo if the infrastructure, wholesale access, and corporate control lead back to the same place. Changing the color of the website is not competition.
Republika Srpska is not the only part of Bosnia with concentration problems, but it provides a particularly clear example of how consolidation can hollow out a market while preserving the appearance of choice.
The competition authorities approved these transactions. That does not automatically mean the decisions were corrupt or illegal. It does mean the long-term effect should be examined honestly.
Did customers receive lower prices, better rural coverage, faster upgrades, and more freedom to switch?
Or did the dominant provider simply become harder to challenge?
That is the question that matters.
Bosnia joined the 4G era in 2019
Bosnia and Herzegovina did not receive commercial 4G service until 2019.
Let that sink in.
By that point, 4G was not new technology. The first commercial LTE networks in Europe had launched almost a decade earlier. Operators in more developed markets were already testing and deploying 5G.
Bosnia was celebrating something that had become normal elsewhere years before.
This delay was not caused by a lack of smartphones. It was not caused by customers refusing to use mobile data. It was not because the laws of physics function differently in the Balkans.
Licensing, spectrum allocation, institutional delay, and political dysfunction all played a role.
The three established operators received 4G licenses from the Communications Regulatory Agency in 2019. Deployment followed, and coverage improved considerably in cities and along major roads.
That was obviously positive. I am not going to criticize 4G simply because it arrived late.
But announcing a network and building a consistently useful network are not the same thing.
A coverage map can show a large colored area while saying very little about what happens inside buildings, in valleys, on secondary roads, or in villages where the signal jumps between 4G, 3G, and nothing useful.
People do not use coverage maps. They use phones.
The real test is whether a connection remains stable when someone leaves Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Mostar, or another major urban area. In many parts of Bosnia, that experience remains unpredictable.
The country’s geography makes network deployment more difficult. Mountains, valleys, scattered settlements, and low population density increase the cost of coverage.
But difficult is not the same as impossible.
Norway has difficult terrain. Switzerland has mountains. Croatia has islands, mountains, and large seasonal changes in network demand. None of this prevented those countries from building modern mobile networks.
Bosnia’s geography is a challenge. It is not a complete explanation.
Mobile internet exposes the real weakness
Fixed broadband statistics can hide a lot.
One household may have a good fiber connection in central Sarajevo while another relies on an old copper line a few kilometers away. Average speeds improve when providers upgrade profitable urban neighborhoods, even if rural and suburban users remain stuck with outdated infrastructure.
Mobile internet is harder to disguise because people carry the network around with them.
A mobile network should allow customers to move across the country without constantly thinking about which operator dominates which region. Calls should not fall back to older network technology unnecessarily. Data should not become unreliable the moment someone leaves a city center.
That is not always the experience in Bosnia.
The quality can vary dramatically by operator, municipality, neighborhood, road, and even the side of a building. One provider may work well in a specific town but perform badly twenty kilometers away. Another may offer a strong outdoor signal but struggle indoors.
Some variation is normal in every country. The scale and persistence of the variation are the problem.
Bosnia has spent years near the bottom of various European broadband and mobile connectivity comparisons. The exact ranking changes depending on the month, methodology, and whether the measurement covers fixed or mobile connections. Calling Bosnia literally the slowest country in Europe at every moment would be inaccurate.
The more defensible conclusion is still bad enough: Bosnia has repeatedly remained among Europe’s weaker performers, despite the technology needed to fix much of the problem being widely available.
This is not 2006 anymore.
Customers are not impressed by the fact that mobile data technically exists. They expect it to work.
VoLTE should not still feel experimental
VoLTE allows voice calls to use the 4G network instead of forcing the phone to fall back to 3G or 2G.
This is not some futuristic feature for telecom enthusiasts. It improves call setup times, voice quality, and the ability to maintain a modern data connection during calls. It also makes it easier for operators to eventually retire older network technology and reuse valuable spectrum.
In a mature 4G market, VoLTE should be boring.
In Bosnia, it still feels inconsistent.
Support may depend on the operator, subscription type, device model, firmware, SIM card, provisioning status, or whether someone in customer support understands what the customer is asking about.
An operator can technically claim to offer VoLTE while supporting only a limited selection of devices or customer categories. That checks a box, but it does not create a dependable nationwide service.
The same applies to Wi-Fi calling, eSIM support, and other features that have become routine in many markets.
Bosnian operators often present basic network modernization as a premium achievement. That marketing might work better if customers did not know how phones operate outside the country.
And then there is 5G
While European operators are discussing 5G Standalone, private 5G networks, network slicing, and the future of 6G, Bosnia still does not have a normal nationwide commercial 5G experience.
There have been tests, demonstrations, equipment announcements, and conversations about future readiness. Those things are not worthless, but they are not a commercial network.
A 5G logo displayed during a controlled demonstration does not mean a customer can buy a plan, walk outside, and use 5G across a meaningful coverage area.
I also do not believe Bosnia needs 5G merely because the number is higher.
A stable and well-designed 4G network is more useful than a 5G icon connected to inadequate backhaul. There is no point installing new radio equipment if base stations are poorly connected, rural coverage remains weak, and customers receive tiny data allowances.
Still, the absence of commercial 5G says something about the market.
Operators facing aggressive competition usually use new network technology to attract customers. They race to cover cities, publish independent test results, improve device support, and offer better plans.
Operators in a comfortable market can wait.
Bosnian consumers have already demonstrated that they will tolerate 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 known as RAK, is responsible for regulating telecommunications and broadcasting. It manages spectrum, issues licenses, adopts rules, and monitors parts of the market.
In theory, it is an independent regulator.
The problem is that no institution in Bosnia operates in a political vacuum. Appointments, budgets, laws, and enforcement priorities exist inside a system dominated by political parties and ethnic power-sharing.
People often go one step further and claim that telecom operators directly pay political cartels that control the regulator. I understand where that suspicion comes from. The relationships between public companies, political parties, government appointments, advertising budgets, public procurement, and media influence deserve serious scrutiny.
But suspicion is not evidence, and I am not going to present direct bribery as a proven fact without documentation.
The visible problem is already serious enough.
Two of the major operators are deeply connected to public ownership structures. The third also operates within a politically sensitive ownership and institutional environment. Political authorities influence the legal framework and the appointment environment around regulatory bodies. Public institutions are themselves major telecom customers.
That creates obvious conflicts of interest.
The state is simultaneously an owner, policymaker, customer, and regulator.
When the same political system benefits from operator profits, controls public contracts, and shapes regulatory institutions, aggressive regulation becomes less likely. Even without an illegal instruction, everyone understands which decisions are politically easy and which are not.
This is how regulatory capture can work. It does not always require an envelope of cash. Sometimes it is built into the incentives.
When customers complain, they usually enter a slow administrative process involving the provider first and the regulator later. The individual customer has limited time, limited information, and almost no market power.
The operator has lawyers, engineers, regulatory specialists, and years of experience.
That is not a balanced relationship.
A virtual operator is not automatically real competition
Bosnia has seen alternative mobile brands and virtual operator arrangements. This is better than having no alternatives at all.
But an MVNO only creates meaningful competition if it receives fair wholesale access and enough commercial freedom to challenge the network owner.
If a virtual operator depends completely on an incumbent’s infrastructure, wholesale pricing, technical support, and access conditions, its ability to compete may be limited from the beginning.
An MVNO should be able to innovate on pricing, data packages, customer service, eSIM activation, roaming, and specialized business services. It should not exist merely to create one more logo in a shopping mall.
Bosnia needs wholesale rules that allow independent operators to become genuine competitive threats.
Otherwise, an MVNO is renting a chair in somebody else’s casino.
Customers have been trained to expect too little
One reason this system survives is that expectations remain low.
People compare their current service to what they had five or ten years ago and conclude that the situation has improved.
Of course it has improved. Technology became cheaper, equipment improved, smartphones became universal, and global internet traffic exploded. A telecom operator would need to make an active effort to provide exactly the same service it offered in 2010.
The relevant comparison is not Bosnia today against Bosnia fifteen years ago.
The relevant comparison is Bosnia against countries using the same generation of network technology today.
Are data allowances competitive?
Is 4G coverage dependable outside urban centers?
Is VoLTE enabled by default on commonly used phones?
Can customers activate eSIM without unnecessary bureaucracy?
Are advertised speeds close to real-world speeds?
Can customers leave a contract without being punished when the provider repeatedly fails to deliver?
Can an independent company obtain fair access to infrastructure?
Those questions produce a much less flattering picture.
The solution is a free market, but not the fake version
The obvious solution is competition.
Not competition in political speeches. Not three logos on a government presentation. Not subsidiaries pretending to compete with their parent company.
Bosnia needs the kind of competition that makes established operators uncomfortable.
A free market does not mean abandoning regulation and hoping everything magically fixes itself. Telecom infrastructure has extremely high entry costs. Spectrum is limited. Towers require permits. Fiber networks require construction. Dominant operators can make market entry almost impossible without technically breaking any obvious rule.
Creating a real market therefore requires active structural reform.
Open the market to a serious fourth operator
Bosnia should make future spectrum allocation transparent and attractive to new entrants, including established European or regional operators.
A fourth physical network might be difficult to justify in a small country, but it should not be ruled out simply because the current operators dislike the idea.
Spectrum auctions should reward coverage commitments and investment, not merely the ability to pay the highest initial fee. A new operator could receive phased coverage requirements, infrastructure-sharing rights, and temporary national roaming while building its network.
The goal should be to reduce entry barriers without creating a permanently subsidized company.
Force fair wholesale access
Independent MVNOs need regulated access to existing mobile networks under transparent and nondiscriminatory conditions.
Wholesale prices should be published or independently reviewed. Technical access should include modern features such as 4G, VoLTE, 5G when available, eSIM, and reasonable quality-of-service terms.
An incumbent should not be able to offer an MVNO a deliberately inferior version of the network and then point to its failure as proof that competition does not work.
Treat future acquisitions as a market issue, not paperwork
Every new telecom acquisition should be evaluated based on its practical effect on local and regional competition.
National market share alone can be misleading. An operator might not appear dominant across the entire country while controlling nearly all meaningful infrastructure in a particular entity, canton, or municipality.
Competition authorities should examine local dominance, shared ownership, wholesale dependencies, and the loss of potential future competitors.
In some cases, approval should require the sale of infrastructure, guaranteed wholesale access, or other structural remedies.
And yes, sometimes the correct answer should simply be no.
Publish honest coverage and performance data
Operators should be required to provide standardized coverage data that can be independently verified.
RAK should publish interactive maps based not only on operator predictions but also on measurements, customer data, and drive testing. Results should include download speed, upload speed, latency, indoor reliability, dropped calls, and VoLTE availability.
Marketing coverage is not the same as usable coverage.
If public money or regulatory privileges support network expansion, the public should be able to see what was actually built.
Make switching painless
Number portability must be fast, predictable, and inexpensive. Contract terms should be written in language ordinary people can understand.
Customers should be able to leave without excessive penalties when a provider repeatedly fails to deliver the advertised service.
eSIM activation should be available remotely where identity rules permit it. Artificial store visits and paperwork protect incumbents, not customers.
The harder it is to switch, the less pressure providers feel to improve.
Build infrastructure once and share it
Bosnia does not need three separate towers on every hill just to preserve the illusion of independence.
Infrastructure sharing can lower costs and improve rural coverage, provided it does not become another method of excluding newcomers.
Municipalities should simplify permits for towers and fiber deployment. Public infrastructure such as roads, railways, power routes, and utility ducts should be coordinated with broadband construction.
When a road is opened for construction, fiber ducts should be installed at the same time. Digging up the same street repeatedly because institutions refuse to communicate is not development. It is 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 major decisions.
Performance testing should be independent. Enforcement statistics should be public. Consumers should be able to see how many complaints were received, how long cases took, what violations were found, and what penalties were imposed.
Senior officials should disclose relevant financial and political ties. A meaningful cooling-off period should apply before regulators can work for companies they supervised.
Independence cannot be declared in a law and then assumed to exist forever. It has to be demonstrated.
Separate public ownership from political management
Public ownership is not automatically bad. A publicly owned telecom company can be efficient, innovative, and profitable.
Political management is the problem.
Boards and executives should not be rewards distributed after elections. Procurement should be transparent. Employment should not be used as a party patronage system. Company profits should not protect political influence at the expense of investment and competition.
If governments want to remain owners, they should act like professional owners.
If they cannot do that, then the ownership structure needs to change.
Bosnia does not lack engineers or demand
What frustrates me most is that Bosnia does not lack technical talent.
The country has developers, network engineers, system administrators, security specialists, entrepreneurs, and remote workers serving clients around the world. Many understand modern infrastructure perfectly well because they work with it every day.
Bosnia also does not lack demand.
People stream video, work remotely, use cloud software, run online businesses, communicate with family abroad, and depend on mobile connectivity for ordinary life. Tourists expect mobile data. Diaspora visitors immediately notice the difference between networks.
The missing ingredient is pressure.
The current operators have had too little reason to fear losing customers. Regulators have faced too little pressure to produce measurable results. Political institutions have benefited too much from preserving control.
That is why technical progress has arrived late and unevenly.
The uncomfortable conclusion
Bosnia’s internet problem is not really an internet problem.
It is a market problem, a regulatory problem, and ultimately a political problem.
The cables and antennas can be installed. Spectrum can be allocated. VoLTE can be activated. 5G equipment can be purchased. None of this is mysterious technology.
The difficult part is building a system in which powerful operators are forced to compete and regulators are forced to regulate.
Free-market competition is the answer, but Bosnia will not get it by waiting for the existing telecom groups to voluntarily weaken their own positions.
It will require transparent spectrum policy, serious merger control, fair wholesale access, easier switching, independent performance measurements, infrastructure sharing, and a regulator that expects to be questioned.
It may also require pressure from the European Union, international financial institutions, civil society, businesses, and customers who stop treating poor service as a natural feature of the country.
Bosnia joined the 4G era late. It should not repeat the same mistake with 5G, network modernization, and the next generation of digital infrastructure.
Twenty years ago, slow internet in Bosnia shocked me.
What shocks me now is how many people with power still appear comfortable with it.