A Tale of Two Cities

by Dr. Kolos

I recently moved to Sarajevo in order to open an Internet cafe and run a computer literacy workshop/reference center.  Previously, I lived in Prague for three years and arrived here expecting a similarly antiquated phone system made all the more unreliable by four years of war.  I was very wrong.

Prague

The Czech Republic was a very rich country in the early part of this century.  In 1938, just before being invaded by Hitler's army, it was the seventh most industrial country in the world.  It thus had an extensive and complete telephone system, very modern at the time.  Unfortunately, 40 years of (((communism))) not only brought the country down the path of economic ruin, it also did nothing to improve the telephone network.  Thus, when I arrived in 1992, the same system, by and large, was still operational.

Many houses still have 1940s rotary phones with a mechanical ringer.  The exchanges usually crackle and hiss with static.  One has to dial slowly to ensure all the cylinders properly respond to the pulse signals.  The population increase was not met with an installation of new exchanges but rather with the introduction of shared lines.  The apartment building I lived in had ten numbers and one line.

Outside my old apartment door was a small metal box containing a single step cylinder.  I could hear it go click, click, click and then the phone in the apartment across from mine would start ringing (his number ended with three).  When he finished his phone call and hung up, the switch would reset.  I could then pick up my telephone, wait, hear the cylinder outside click seven times, then get a dial tone (my number ended with seven).

City codes (also known as area codes) are non-standardized as are phone number lengths.  In Prague (City Code 2), you have six-, seven-, or eight-digit phone numbers.  In some small towns, there will be a five-digit city code with only a two-digit phone number!  Yes, I had a friend whose number was city code: +21

Their method of billing is wonderful.  At the end of each month you receive the bill for the previous, previous month (i.e., in March you will get January's phone bill).  It will simply state X amount of money with absolutely no itemization, either of local, long distance, or operator calls.  You have no way of telling what you are being billed for.

The way they track billing is even more interesting; they walk into a giant room full of mechanical unit counters and take a photograph of your line's counter.  When the picture is developed they then match it against the previous month's photograph, subtract the difference, and charge you accordingly.

Line shortages are chronic and if you move into a flat without a telephone, you will not get a telephone, so you move into a flat with a telephone.

The Czech phone company (SPT Telecom) has recently been privatized and is doing its very best to upgrade the system.  They have placed fiber optic cables on the main trunk lines between cities and they have installed some new digital exchanges.  One area of Prague is now fully digital.  When I was working for an Internet access provider there, we were given ten (yes, ten) phone lines so we could operate (and had to wait only two months for them to be installed).

There is some competition.  MetroNet, for example, has laid fiber optic cables in Prague's subway tunnels and is offering fast ATM connections (if you happen to live near the subway of course).  A competing company (partly owned by US West) has introduced a cellular service with almost nationwide coverage (at outrageous rates).

There are numerous advantages to living in a mostly mechanical switch world.  Call tracing, for example, is virtually impossible.  Authorities would have to physically go from exchange to exchange to check the position of mechanical switches.  All "star" features that exist in the U.S. are unthinkable, which can be good; Caller ID, Call Blocking, and other such "security" features are the hysterical reactions of a paranoid society.

With regards to public telephones, well, because of the line shortage there are few of them.  They are mostly new card phones using the prepaid "Gold Card" as described in 2600 a year or so ago.  There are many hacked cards making the rounds.  They have an extra chip in them that gives them unlimited usage.  I think that due to this problem the phone company recently introduced a new kind of public telephone on which this hacked card does not work.

Coin phones are rare and are usually out of order.  Petty thieves will stuff paper down the coin deposit slot.  After many unsuspecting users have lost their money in the jammed slot, the thief will go back to the phone with a long flat steel rod and shove the money out, walking away with a rather pitiful profit.

Sarajevo

When I arrived in Sarajevo, I expected all this plus war damage.

Not only was the former Yugoslavia a fairly prosperous country, but Sarajevo, as host to the 1984 Winter Olympic games, was the beneficiary of a huge modernization project.  The old analog system was replaced with digital switches, and intercity connections over this mountainous country were done by fast microwave links (10 Mb/s and more).  Many features established here at the time were not even available in the U.K. or Italy, such as Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, and so on.

Today Slovenia, which separated from the Yugoslav federation without much pain, has a thriving commercial Internet market, alternative BBS networks, Internet cafes, and a very reliable phone system.  Bosnia would have been the same.

The war in Bosnia was not an inevitable consequence of centuries of hatred but rather a very well organized coup that the Bosnian Serbs planned months ahead of the first shots being fired.  It was executed to perfection in the first few months, but they met unexpected resistance and what was meant to be a short takeover battle became a very long and bloody civil war.

The first day of the war, barriers were set up throughout Sarajevo at previously determined strategic positions.  The Serbs took control of all the surrounding mountains.

On the second day, they torched the city's main post office.  This contained the main switching station for the city and thus ensured a local phone blackout.  While firefighters tried to put out the flames they were sniped and shelled.  The main communications tower that was used to link Sarajevo to Belgrade (via microwave) was in Serb hands and shut down (Yugoslavia's international exchange was in Belgrade thus isolating Sarajevo).  They then cut any land lines that connected Sarajevo to outlying towns and villages.  Electricity generating stations were also shut down, and thus, in the first days of the war Serbs ensured a total shutdown of telephone service.

But the Bosnians were resilient.  There were two more telephone exchanges in Sarajevo that were successfully defended against attacks.  The spare capacity of these exchanges was used to rewire some of the subscribers in the center of town who had lost their service.  Portable generators were used to power the system, thus ensuring telephone service despite lack of any other amenities.  A year later they installed their first satellite link, between Sarajevo and Bern (Switzerland), and established the new country code for Bosnia, 387.  It was once again possible to have an international conversation.

This made it quite a surreal experience.  Residents of Sarajevo would be at home, without water or electricity, with constant shelling outside, chatting on the phone and hitting flash when there was a call waiting...  They would also hook up small radios to the telephone lines, these 12V being the only available electricity.

As the war progressed, there were improvements.  The first international satellite connection was only 16 voice channels (for a country with two million inhabitants and two million refugees in other countries wanting to telephone home), but soon more were added.  There is now a satellite link to Italy, Sweden, Germany, England, and the U.S., each with between 32 and 180 voice channels.  They are generally using Ericsson equipment (including AXE digital exchanges).  They have also replaced some of the destroyed national microwave links between cities with VSAT links.  This is expensive, but fixing the old links has proved too slow and complicated in a country with a front line.

Thus, here in Sarajevo, despite its turbulent history, I have found a far better, more modern, and more flexible telephone system than in Prague.  Is that weird?

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