Tomašković: HT is investing 1.3 billion kuna this year, or 25 percent more than last year

Croatian Telecom (HT) has completed a five-year modernization process worth 400 million kuna, during which it transitioned its fixed network to IP (Internet Protocol) technology, becoming one of the few telecoms in Europe to migrate all its users and services to an All-IP network environment, which is a prerequisite for future services, connected homes, offices, and cities.

Announcing the completion of this process at a ceremony on Monday evening in Zagreb, which HT has been working on since 2010 until the end of November this year, HT’s CEO Davor Tomašković emphasized that HT has become the third telecom in Europe to migrate all users and services (mobile and fixed) to IP.

“By migrating the fixed network to IP, we have completed a comprehensive and demanding transformation and modernization process, thereby confirming our position as a technological leader in the Croatian market, and with investments in infrastructure development, we continue further, investing 1.3 billion kuna this year, or 25 percent more than last year,” said Tomašković.
 

The modernization work was also praised by Claudia Nemat, a member of the Management Board of DT (Deutsche Telekom, HT’s majority owner), highlighting that this is not only a success for HT but for the entire DT Group.
 

“Our strategy is to become the leading integrated European provider of telecom services, and the technological modernization of HT supports this as a condition for providing a better customer experience,” said Nemat.
 

The transition to an All-IP environment enables HT to develop and integrate various advanced services, which was not possible with the previous fixed network as it only covered voice service and was not convergent with other services, such as mobile, internet, and TV.
This also resulted in the decommissioning of a total of 72 HT telephone exchanges across Croatia, replaced by two – in Rijeka and Zagreb, which, as expected by HT, will bring savings and other benefits to both the company and its users.

During this process, HT surveyed over one hundred thousand users and has already ‘launched’ some new innovative services that, for example, allow users to use the fixed line on a mobile device, as everything operates on the same technology. This is just part of the numerous possible services, no longer so unimaginable and distant, such as managing devices in the home (washing machines, lights, blinds…) from a car or office with just one ‘click’ via mobile, or finding parking and avoiding traffic jams, not waiting for permits and document issuance, and many others.

The project also encompassed all business processes in HT, seeking the implementation of a new service platform IMS (Internet Multimedia Subsystem), the realization of access via optical network (high speed) to more than 2,500 network nodes in Croatia, upgrading necessary capacities in the core network, and numerous other changes.

In all of this, the expertise and teamwork of all employees were extremely important, specifically more than a thousand engaged in the project, from customer service technicians and equipment installation to engineers, sales, customer service, finance, and many others, for which Tomašković publicly thanked them.

HT’s 72 telephone exchanges, which are now becoming a thing of the past, were built in Croatia in the mid-1980s, while the first telephone exchange in Zagreb started operating in 1881, and the first hundred subscribers were ‘acquired’ only after six years. Much later, in the 1920s, there were about 3,500 telephone connections in Croatia, and connecting calls required waiting two to three minutes, which was reduced to about 30 seconds in the 1930s, and to around four seconds in the 1960s.

These and other interesting facts from the history of telecommunications and the development of fixed telephony in Croatia over the last 128 years will be available for viewing at a special multimedia exhibition at the HT Museum in Zagreb, which HT has announced for mid-December this year.