The establishment of telecommunications networks comparable to those in Western Europe has been difficult in Greece. Several factors have influenced this situation, which has endured for several decades: unstable and polarized political conditions, the mountainous interior and dispersed islands, and the inefficient monopoly of telecommunications, which are run by the state-owned Greek Telecommunications Organization (Organismos Tilepikoinonion Ellados--OTE).

When the telephone system was nationalized and the OTE was established under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in 1949, only one Greek in 100 had a telephone line. Development remained slow through the 1970s; then, beginning in 1981, the Papandreou government began a concerted effort to modernize the country's antiquated telephone network by installing automatic digital exchanges in place of older mechanical exchanges. This process began in 1986, but distribution of digital equipment proceeded very slowly into the early 1990s. During the 1980s, Greece's per-line investment was only about 4 percent of the average for the most developed countries in the world, the telephone breakdown rate in that period was fifty-seven per 100 inhabitants, and the average waiting period for telephone installation exceeded four years.

Between 1980 and 1990, the number of automatic exchanges increased from 1,209, with a capacity of 2.5 million lines, to 1,923, with a capacity of 4.1 million lines. In the same period, the number of telephones in operation increased from 2.8 million to 4.7 million. The waiting list was longer in 1990 than in 1980, however, and even high-priority users, such as hospitals and businesses, waited for as long as a year for installation in 1990. In 1992 Greece had 4,722 telephone exchanges and 5.3 million telephones in service.

In the early 1990s, the politicization of the OTE remained a serious obstacle to installation of a modern national communications network. During the socialist administrations of 1981-89, telephone investments were awarded first to regions supporting the party in power, and by 1988 the OTE was the focal point of charges that the government had wiretapped opposition leaders. In 1990 the new conservative government promised that by 1993 about 1.2 million digital lines would be in service and cellular service would be introduced. (At that point, Greece was the only EC country without cellular service.) In the years that followed, bids for cellular and digital equipment procurement brought bitter disputes over suppliers and calls for reform. In 1991 the EC issued special communications standards for Greece because of its slow development.

In the early 1990s, the poor quality of transmissions limited the use of the public network for data transmission. The leasing of modem lines from the OTE is subject to complex regulations and limitations. In 1987 a public-packet switched data network, Hellaspac, began operation. Mobile telephony became the first type of telecommunications not monopolized by the OTE when two private consortia introduced it in 1993. In 1994 the Papandreou government attempted partial privatization of the OTE by selling a minority part of the company's equity capital on the Greek and foreign stock exchanges, but the plan died amid interministerial wrangling and insufficient planning when market prices for the shares appeared much lower than expected. Instead, the government extended the OTE's monopoly over the national telecommunications infrastructure and cable networks until 2003. Although new privatization plans were possible as early as 1995, experts disagreed about the prospects for price reductions, modernization, and the fate of foreign networks in the Greek market without genuine domestic competition in the industry.

Greek Radio and Television (Elliniki Radiofonia Tileorasi--ERT) is the government broadcasting corporation. Since private broadcasting stations were legalized in 1987, breaking the state monopoly of telecommunications, Greek television and radio programming has diversified significantly, although the ERT's broadcasts still reach the largest numbers of listeners. In 1993 about 2.3 million television sets and 4.1 million radios were in operation.

In 1994 the ERT's Greek Radio (Elliniki Radiofonia--ERA) was operating twenty-five medium-wave and eighteen frequency modulation (FM) radio stations; eleven private radio stations were operating in Athens at that time, and twenty-two additional stations broadcast to regional areas. Four national and regional networks provide domestic radio programming, and an external service, the Voice of Greece, broadcasts overseas in sixteen languages.

In 1994, the ERT's Greek Television (Elliniki Tileorasi--ET) operated three television networks, encompassing forty-seven channels. Of that number, Athens had five, Thessaloniki three, and the Greek islands a total of ten stations. The ET-1 network provides the main service, ET-2 specializes in cultural programming, and ET-3 transmits regional programming from its Thessaloniki facility. Two private television channels that were licensed in 1990 have gained large audiences, and other private entertainment channels had been licensed by 1992. The government networks provide color telecasts through the French Secam color television broadcast system. Several foreign cable channels are received in Greece, but only one, the Cable News Network (CNN) provides regular news coverage.

Data as of December 1994

NOTE: The information regarding Greece on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Greece Telecommunications information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Greece Telecommunications should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.