Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Information Society and Telecommunications, Vujica Lazović PhD, met today with the CEOs of the companies Crnogorski Telekom, M:tel and Telenor, Ruediger Schulz, Vladimir Lučić and Michael Malvebo.

They exchanged opinions on the state of the electronic telecommunication market, new technological trends and cooperation of the leading operators toward the development of the Information Society.

They agreed on the need for joint deployment of the state and the telecommunication companies in achieving the goals set forth in the Strategy for development of the Information Society, which are in line with the EU Strategy 2020 and have a special significance in the process of negotiations with the European Union.

The cooperation must be focused on future activities related to the improvement of broadband, increase in the use of the Internet, as well as further development of Internet literacy, in terms of enhancement of the level of e-readiness of the society to respond to the challenges of this highly developed and fast-growing market. The need for further education through potential reorganization of the programs of the study specialized in education of IT experts has also been pointed out, with Mr. Lazović announcing meetings with the academic community.

DPM Lazović announced that the operators will be soon called to public-private partnership, aimed at joint efforts toward further development, particularly concerning fixed broadband, in order to overcome so called digital gap, which is also one of the goals mentioned in the Strategy.

Roaming initiative was also one of the topics of the meeting, as well as decline in revenue of the operators due to the increased use of free applications such as Viber and WhatsApp, which is also a global problem for the telecommunication operators.