Internet satellite connection between University of Sarajevo and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam closes down.

Following technical and bureaucratic problems in Sarajevo, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam had to decide this week to close down the Internet satellite connection between Amsterdam and Sarajevo. The link, BiH's first ever connection to the Internet, became oprational in February 1996. It was set up and run by a group of volunteers known as 'VUSUS' (Vrije Universiteit Supports University of Sarajevo).

It is unclear where the approximately DEM 800,000 which the project must have raised for UTIC (the link was 100% foreign sponsored, while UniSa collected moderate subscription fees from their users for three years) have gone. The second sponsor of the project, Fond Otvoreno Drustvo (Soros Sarajevo), abandoned the project 16 months ago for lack of cooperation on the UniSarajevo side.

The Slovenian academic community is now setting up an academic Internet network for Bosnia, thereby largely ignoring/bypassing the UniSarajevo.

All this leaves Bosnia with just two Internet connections to the rest of the world: BiHNet, owned and operated by Bosnian PTT, and the WUS link, a cooperation between professor Avdispahic of the UniSarajevo and professor Wolfgang Benedek of the University of Graz, Austria.

The monopoly of PTT BiH (the SDA-dominated government's principal cash-cow) has led to very high rates for Internet accounts for non-academic users, so much so that Bosniaks are now calling for one day boycotts of the BiHNet system (see Domovina Net's Forum pages).