Bulgaria
Overcoming Isolation December 1997
When talking about the key policy issue for Bulgaria, one has to bear
in mind several historical events:
-
The Bulgarian government has never supported development of the Internet
-
The Internet developed right from the beginning in that country as a commercial
service
-
For two years there was only one company providing Internet service in
the country, and for another three, only two such companies.
-
Recently, the Internet is being used by local shadow-economy companies
and people.
[...] I've come to the conclusion that the key policy issue for Bulgaria
is to provide high-speed access to the Net while uniting Internet service
providers via a national backbone.
Bulgaria is suffering from post-Cold War syndrom. Ours is an isolated
region that Europe and many other parts of the world have considered dangerous
for the past hundred years.
[...]
What Bulgaria can give to the world is a 1,300-year-old culture, the
Cyrillic alphabet, history, nature, literature, and software brains. What
can Bulgaria get from the Internet ? Jobs, culture, religion, entertainments,
friends, colleagues, and places of interest.
Veni Markovsky