The ( company in
Bulgaria and a former state-owned
Monopoly . Founded as a
Joint Stock Company in the end of
1992 as part of the separation of Bulgaria's post and telecommunication services into separate companies, it serves a total of 2.9 million
Fixed Phone lines and employs about 20,000 people.
65% of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company were sold to Viva Ventures, owned by
Advent International , for
€ 280 million in
June 2004 . As part of the deal, BTC was provided a
GSM operator license and launched
Vivatel , Bulgaria's third GSM operator, in
2005 . An
UMTS license was additionally purchased in
May 2005 .
Besides serving the vast majority of fixed telephone lines in the country, BTC is also the biggest Bulgarian
ADSL Internet Service Provider .
