A good role model for other communities.
“There were a lot of problems with the construction works. I remember, when it all started, the municipal website was overwhelmed by criticism, and it was almost impossible for me to walk through the town without neighbours stopping me and complaining,” says one of older inhabitants of the municipality of Bistra, remembering events from 2010, reports lokalni.hr on May 11, 2018.
That was the time when Bistra officially launched the works on the construction and installation of a fibre-optic telecommunication network. The plan was to enable literally all homes in the municipality to have access to super-fast internet. “That was a pilot project we agreed with Croatian Telecom. We were supposed to serve them as a kind of a proving ground for a service which was almost non-existent in Croatia at the time. We agreed that they would bring cables at all homes, at their expense. The works lasted less than a year, which is not long when you consider that they installed more than sixty kilometres of fibre-optic lines,” says Krešimir Gulić, the Mayor of Bistra.
After the works were completed, they could say they were the first municipality in Croatia entirely covered by a fibre-optic network, and they are still the only ones.
“Before the works started, we organised several meetings where we explained how important the project was, especially at that time. In general terms, there was no real resistance and even those who expressed dissatisfaction while the streets were being dug up quickly stopped complaining after everything was over,” says Gulić.
In addition to the citizens' satisfaction, the fibre-optic network brought concrete benefits – several investors came to Bistra because they could not find such infrastructure anywhere else in Croatia, and numerous young families started moving to Bistra, including the one of Dan Klepač.
“In 2012, we bought a house in Bistra and settled in. We needed a good and fast internet connection for our jobs. Also, we wanted to get away from the city, but still be close to Zagreb. After we have studied everything offered in the vicinity of the capital, we decided on Bistra for several factors. It had all the necessary infrastructure, together with beautiful nature. The fibre-optic network was an important factor as well,” says Klepac.
When it comes to plans for the future, Gulić says that, by the end of this year, they plan to install free wireless internet at several locations in the municipality. “The internet we have is still among the best in the country, and when new technologies are developed, you can be sure that we will be among the first to adopt them,” says Gulić.
Translated from lokalni.hr (reported by Elvis Sprečić).
