communications in albania

Until 1990, Albania was one of the world's most isolated and controlled countries, and installation and maintenance of a modern system of international and domestic telecommunications was precluded. Callers previously needed operator assistance even to make domestic long-distance calls. Albania's telephone density was the lowest in Europe, at 1.4 units for every 100 inhabitants. Tirana accounted for about 13,000 of the country's 42,000 direct lines; Durrs, the main port city, ranked second with 2,000 lines; the rest were concentrated in Shkodr, Elbasan, Vlor, Gjirokastr, and other towns. At one time, each village had a telephone but during the land redistribution of the early 1990s peasants knocked out service to about 1,000 villages by removing telephone wire for fencing. Most of Albania's telephones were obsolete, low-quality East European models, some dating from the 1940s; workers at a Tirana factory assembled a small number of telephones from Italian parts. In the early 1990s, Albania had only 240 microwave circuits to Italy and 180 to Greece carrying international calls. The Albanian telephone company had also installed two U-20 Italtel digital exchanges. The exchange in Tirana handled international, national, and local calls; the Durrs exchange handled only local calls. Two United States firms handled direct-dial calls from the United States to Tirana. Currently the land lines are extremely overloaded and it is very difficult to receive a telephone number. As a result, the number of mobile phones has skyrocketed in the bigger cities.

Telephone System

Main lines in use: 255,000 (2003)
Mobile cellular: 1.1 million (2003)

General assessment

Albania has the poorest telephone service in Europe with fewer than two telephones per 100 inhabitants; it is doubtful that every village has telephone service

Domestic: obsolete wire system; no longer provides a telephone for every village; in 1992, following the fall of the Communist government, peasants cut the wire to about 1,000 villages and used it to build fences
International: inadequate; international traffic carried by microwave radio relay from the Tirana exchange to Italy and Greece