Pursuant to the adopted Strategy for the development of broadband Internet access in the Republic of Croatia, the Croatia Government passes actions plans for the forthcoming year.
An Action plans represents a number of continuous activities and individual measures, which the Croatian Government, state government bodies and other state bodies are obliged to carry out until the end of the current year, in order to fulfil strategic goals defined by the Strategy.
State government bodies and other state bodies which were, pursuant to the Action plan, delegated with tasks to implement continuous activities and individual measures, are not in any way limited only to the implementation of these activities and measures.
Continuous activities and individual measures which are part of the Action plan represent the smallest scope of duties which must be undertaken by state government bodies and other state bodies.
Speaking of the development of broadband Internet access, a special emphasis was given in 2008 to further increase in the number of broadband Internet access users and further development of broadband infrastructure in areas of special state concern and hill-mountain areas.
According to the official report on the execution of the Action plan for the implementation of broadband Internet access in the Republic of Croatia for 2008, a significant growth in the number of broadband Internet users was recorder. By the end of 2008, this number amounted to 524,683 users in immobile network (density of approx. 11.83%), and 158,524 broadband users through mobile communication network (density 3.57%). Together these amount to more than 683,000 broadband connections (density 15.4%). Thereby, it is important to point out that the share of new broadband access providers is 15.66%. The total density of broadband connections taking into account the estimated number of inhabitants in 2008 in relation to 2007 increased by 35.98%.
It should be particularly emphasised that one of more important initiators of development of market competitiveness regarding broadband access in 2008 was improved offer by the wholesale of broadband access operators with remarkable market strength, as well as further intensification of local loop separation, with favourable rates for these separated local loops, and more intensive construction of own access infrastructure by new operators and investment into modernisation of access infrastructure of cable networks.
The number of connections at the end of 2008 registered to a natural person amounted to 407,966, whereas the number of connections registered to a legal entity amounted to 116,717. This indicated that most of broadband internet accesses are still related to households.
If we compare broadband access development in the Republic of Croatia in relation to that in EU, a clear progress was noted in 2008.Namely, at the end of 2007, density in Croatia was 8.72%, whereas density in EU was 20.00%. In mid 2008, density in Croatia was 10.18% and in EU 21.70%. This means that in the first half of 2008, the Republic of Croatia recorded a growth of 16.74%, whereas EU recorded a growth of 8.5%. At the end of the third quarter the density in Croatia was 11.01 %. By comparing density data for 2007 and 2008, a positive step is noted in 2008, meaning that Croatia has made a step forward in the total order of EU Member States.