Thank you for welcoming me!

No, these things exists in other countries as well but they are better hidden by governments and official agencies.

In the US, Congress exists to protect and uphold American's rights but they passed the "Patriot Act" dissolving Americans of their privacy as human beings after the 911 tragedy.

In Norway, the government favors competition for all Telecommunication companies but does not sell any additional mobile licenses thereby allowing Telenor (national telecommunication operator) to continue its dominant market share in mobile.

Every country, if researched well enough, will have these unfair practices within their cultures and economies. Serbians should feel upset but not alone.

Actually, this what you describe is called economic nationalism and it is applied by every country in strategic industrial sectors (telecoms, transport, natural resources, agriculture) and to protect infant or less competitive industries, before they can stand on their own two feet.

As long as the international system operates the way it does, states will try to protect those parts of the economy that are crucial to their self-sustainability at times of conflict or international crises.

Liberal economy as envisioned by the early liberal idea has never truly come into practice and will not as long as nation-states are the building blocks of international society, which they will remain for a long time to come.

State monopolies are OK in some areas, as long as an adequate portion of the profits is invested in upgrading services and are used to improve the economy, infrastructure and life standards in general through budgetary allocation.

It is corrupt authorities that embezzle these funds on one hand, and cronism between private monopoly holders and state officials that are the real problem.

A good reader for this is Nationalism and International Relations (Mayall), Chapter 5 available at the British Council in Belgrade

There is also a good CAFOD report on how the advanced economies did not practice what they are preaching to developing nations today when they were at the same stage of development. Forgot the title...

The challenges are also that even if everyone is connected by wireless, the wireless ISP must purchase bandwidth from Telekom Serbia which is about 450 Euro per MB. This is some of the most expensive bandwidth in the world!

If usage was only for web surfing and email, then a few MB would be good enough.

I will blog in a few days what Serbian developers can do to take advantage of this opportunity to create a new market for Serbian developers.

This is very exciting and with fame comes opportunity. Serbia shall have its chance to shine VERY soon!

I think he meant (and may he correct me if I'm wrong) to say that an entire apartment building could share the cost by having one of the tenants open a personal account with Telekom, then set up his/her home network and have all the other nodes/PCs in the building connect to the 'Net through the one connection.

I may be wrong (I'm no expert) but every decent provider has a limit on the amount of computers they allow in a network. Additionally, they're bound to catch you within a week as they can monitor the activity of each of their accounts. When they see the amount of bandwidth used, there will be red flags galore. Furthermore, they can limit the bandwidth itself, not just the # of computers in a network.

They will allocate you a certain amount per month; what I spend in a month, a building with 5 PCs/users might spend in less than a week. Not to mention that the connection speed will suffer greatly if you add additional machines to the network.

Before I forget, is there a provider in Serbia that offers UNLIMITED access? When I was in Canada, I had a DSL connection with unlimited access and I was being charged $29.95/mo. (That's about 20€). I then switched to cable and was paying $10 more per month.

Seems to me the European users are being taken for quite a ride when it comes to the internet and cell phone bills.