"Keeping Connected" in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Tips for using your mobile device in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Using your mobile device in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

What's the deal?

I get asked a lot about using mobile devices in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) by either family, friends or guests.

Hopefully the following info will be both helpful and useful for you.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is not in the European Union (EU), and to be honest won't be, for a considerable time to come (I think).

So if you are used to travelling around Europe, enjoying your mobile device, as you would "at home", at cheap rates with your at "home SIM card", sadly that's not going to be the case when traveling around BiH.

Connectivity using your UK or EU account is going to be mega costly! Trust me!

But it's not all doom and gloom. Far from it!

As part of your Bosnia and Herzegovina pre-visit planning, check if your mobile device is "unlocked", in other words, not tied to a specific network provider.

If it is "unlocked", that means the device will accept any SIM card and, by default, any network.

On arrival in BiH, stop at any of the plethora of street-side kiosks and buy a SIM card.

To be honest, for tourists or visitors, the differences each network offers, won't have any drastic impact on your visit.

SIM cards start at around 5 BAM (£2.50/€2.50), which allows you a few calls and a tiny amount of starting data.

"Topping Up" is so so easy (and extremely inexpensive) and can be done from any street kiosks, as well as the checkouts in most grocery stores.

I buy 10 BAM top ups for our PAYE cards.

We then “top up” with the 3 BAM for 3 day rate, which gives us 30GB of data to use over those 3 days.

“Dopuna” means to Top Up

Look carefully at the SIM and you'll see that they come in all sizes from Large to Nano. You just need to "Press Out" the size for your device.

The language on your device will initially change to Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian but it's easy to set that back to your operating language of choice.

Most of the country is now covered by LTE, so you should be good to go when posting your snaps and videos of "Beautiful Bosnia", to your online social networks.

The average LTE speeds I have experienced are: 8Mb up and 20Mb down.

Also, like other countries, nearly every coffee bar, pub and restaurant offers free wi-fi, so it's worth a quick check, thus saving your mobile data.

If your mobile device is "locked" into a UK/EU network provider, then my TOP TIP is to put it airplane mode for the duration of your trip and just use wi-fi or “Hotspots” whenever you can.

Oh! Did I say that more and more buses travelling between cities in the region are now offering free wi-fi?

---

What You Might Have Missed?

If you can’t subscribe to Coffee and Rakija, for whatever reason, and really would like access to all my content, please drop me a message.

Come and Visit Us in Bosnia and Herzegovina

📈 The Survey 📊

I have a short survey designed to improve my Substack. It would be super helpful if you could find under 5 minutes to complete it. Thanks so much in advance.

And Finally

Don’t forget that you can read back editions of the newsletter, listen to previous podcasts (we have quite an archive now), or catch other content, all this is available on the web interface, just like a regular blog.

Oh, and please share the newsletter with friends, relatives and colleagues using the button below.

Tamara and I appreciate your faithful readership, your comments, and your generosity! 

Until our next post.

THANKS SO MUCH ❤️

As ever stay safe wherever you are.

Bests

David and Tamara.

If you can’t subscribe to Coffee and Rakija, for whatever reason, and really would like access to all my content, please drop me a message.