Almost every house in Bulgaria has a landline connection and it’s easy to get a phone connected. The mobile phone system covers the entire country, with only a few isolated mountain areas outside the network.
Installation & Registration
Most Bulgarian properties have a telephone line, but when you move in you will need to have it connected. It isn't possible simply to take over the telephone number of the previous occupants, who will have cancelled their subscription when they moved out.
To have a line connected, you must visit your local post office, with evidence that you’re the owner or tenant of the property and proof of your identity. According to the rules, foreign residents must produce a residence permit, but this isn’t always required and it’s up to the official you’re dealing with whether he will accept your application without a permit.
If you don’t have a residence permit, you should take all your limited company papers with you, including the registration papers, a copy of your certificate of tax registration and a copy of the property’s title deeds or rental agreement. In any case, it’s recommended that you take someone who speaks Bulgarian with you to make the process easier.
It normally takes around a month for the line to be connected. BTC will advise you within three days whether there’s ‘technical capacity’ (i.e. if there’s room on the exchange) to connect a new line. You then have 30 days to pay the connection fee (20 lev/€10) and, once BTC has received payment, they’re supposed to connect your service within 20 days. Billing is monthly and can be paid by direct debit, online or at a post office.
If you are building a new property or purchase an abandoned property, you will need to have a new line installed. The process is the same as for connecting an existing line, although it can take much longer (depending on the location of the property) and the fee is 70 lev (€35).
WARNING
If you buy a property in a remote area without a telephone line, it may be expensive to have one installed, as you must pay for the line to be extended to the property. Contact BTC for an estimate (www.btc.bg/en ).
If you already have a telephone number in Bulgaria and are moving into a different property, you can usually take your number with you if the two properties are in the same dialling code area.
If you own a property and are letting it, you can arrange to have outgoing calls limited to the local area, or to regional and national calls only, but you cannot limit the service just to incoming calls.
Telephones
You can buy a telephone from the post office or any retailer. Cordless phones are widely available. The standard Bulgarian telephone connector has three pins. It’s possible to rewire a cord from a standard RJ11 plug to the Bulgarian plug yourself, although it’s safer and easier to buy an adapter plug.
Adapter plugs can usually be purchased at airports and larger electronics retailers, although it’s preferable to buy them before you move to Bulgaria.
Using the Telephone
Bulgaria doesn’t have a standard system for telephone numbers. Some areas have a four-digit dialling code (e.g. Albena, 5722) while others have only a one- or two-digit code (e.g. Sofia, 2). Subscriber numbers can range from three to seven digits.
The Bulgarian telecoms regulator, CTC, has advised that four or five digit area codes are ‘temporary’ and will be phased out in favour of one- to three-digit codes. Numbers beginning 0898, 0899, 0887, 0888 and 0889 are mobile numbers.
To make a local call (i.e. within the same dialling code area) you need to dial only the subscriber number. To call a number in a different code area, dial ‘0’, the area code and the subscriber number.
Note, however, that some areas are on analogue exchanges and require the prefix 99 instead of 0. If you cannot get a connection to a number using 0, try 99. To call Bulgaria from another country, dial your international code, the country code for Bulgaria (359), the area code, then the subscriber number.
Bulgaria now has peak and off-peak rates, the latter being at weekends and after 9pm during the week.
Charges
Privatisation of BTC and deregulation of the telecommunications market has led to the lowering of prices for phone calls and other services, although line rental must still be paid to BTC at fixed rates. BTC offers a range of plans called ‘At Home’, which include up to 120 minutes of local calls and 80 minutes of international calls, starting at 20 lev (€10) per month, including the line rental charge.
Line Rental
The line rental or service charge payable to BTC varies according to the type of line and, in the case of ADSL, the length of the contract, as follows:
- Standard line 10 lev (€5) per month;
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ADSL
There’s a minimum 12-month contract for all plans but some are time-limited, instead of limited by the amount of data you download. The basic 'Tempo' plan costs 20 lev (€10) per month for a 256/64 line and 20 hours’ connection; the 'Unlimited' plan costs 33 lev (€16) per month for 512/128 and has no data or time limits. There are also faster 'Biz' plans which cost more but offer extra email addresses and data hosting for web sites.
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ISDN line
15 lev (€7.50) per month, private; 35 lev (€18) per month, business;
If you use an alternative telephone provider, there may be a separate monthly fee in addition to your call charges, although most providers have dropped these.
Domestic Calls
Domestic call charges are low: for example, a long-distance call between Bourgas and Sofia would cost 0.11 lev (€0.05) for the connection then 0.10 lev per minute during peak periods, or 0.045 lev per minutes off-peak (after 9pm).
Fax
Fax machines can be purchased or rented from private companies and shops. Before bringing a fax machine to Bulgaria, check that it will work there or that it can be modified. For example, some British fax machines won’t work, although it’s possible to buy adaptors for UK phones and fax machines. Keep in mind that getting a foreign fax machine repaired may be impossible if the same model isn’t sold in Bulgaria.
This is an extract from Survival Books’ Living in Bulgaria.
This article is an extract from Buying a Home in Bulgaria
from Survival Books.