Science, technology and telecommunications

[MacTeP]

Bulgaria offers excellent conditions for high-tech and telecommunication industries and services with its strategic location, highly-qualified workforce, macroeconomic stability, growing domestic market and well-educated specialists due to country's traditionally strong educational system, with one of the highest rankings of youth mathematicians and informaticians in the world. For these reasons some multinational companies chose to build their regional offices and headquarters in Bulgaria — even before Bulgaria joined the EU. To date, the most notable is Hewlett-Packard, which built its Global Service Centre for Europe, the Middle East and Africa in Sofia.

Telecommunications has arguably grown faster than any other industry in the country. There are three GSM mobile operators — Globul, Mobiltel and Vivatel — which provide almost 100% coverage. They have hundreds of service centres throughout the country, constantly growing in number and with incredible speed and, also, improving. More than 6,245,000 Bulgarians[22] own mobile cellular phones. Mobikom is the only NMT 450 mobile phone operator. Internet is available in each town and lately in most villages with a fast connectivity and VoIP; DSL connection in bigger cities is offered by BTK. There are around 185,000[23] Internet hosts.

Bulgaria has some precedents for its current science industry. The inventor of the earliest known electronic computer, John Atanasoff, is of Bulgarian descent. The country was a major supplier of scientific and research instruments for the Soviet space programmes, was the first European country to develop serial computer production, and has experience in pharmaceutical research and development. BAS (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences) is the leading scientific institution in the country with most of the researchers working for its numerous branches.

Bulgaria hosts 2 major astronomical observatories:
- the Rozhen Observatory, the biggest in South Eastern Europe
- the Belogradchik Observatory with 3 telescopes.