The Northern European country, Lithuania, appeared to have one of the fastest growing economies in the European Union during the 2008–2009 financial collapse. The country, neighboring to Latvia to the north, Belarus to the southeast, Poland, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the southwest, is populated by less than 3.5 million people. Lithuania is current a member of NATO, the Council of Europe, as well as EU. Lithuania became a full member of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007. In 2009, Vilnius, the capital of the country, became the European Capital of Culture and Lithuania celebrated the millennium of its name.

The Lithuanian telecommunications market is highly developed in comparison with other EU states. The market is characterized by swiftly declining fixed-line subscriber numbers and a saturated mobile sector serviced by three network operators and a number of MVNOs.

ADSL Internet connection in Lithuania is offered by monopoly provider Teo LT. This service might be used by other ISPs for their retail services in the nearest future. The other large operator delivering different kinds of Internet services is Zebra DSL.

Moreover, Lithuania considered having the fastest internet upload speed in the world and fourth by download speed. In early 2009 at least two ISPs in Lithuania offered download speeds of up to 200 Mb/s in their standard packages for home users. Internet use has grown considerably with the incumbent Teo LT dominating the rapidly deploying ADSL market.

Internet penetration has grown significantly with the majority of users accessing the Internet via the mobile phones with 3G connection. Thus, Internet penetration in the country has grown by tremendous 835% for the decade, with over 2 million people actively applying to the Web at present, that makes up almost 60% penetration rate, according to internetworldstats.com. These figures may be compared to the year 2000 when it was seen only 15% broadband subscribers in the country. Later in 2006 the Internet users volume rose to 36%.

The country’s national Internet top level domain (or ccTLD) is .lt, administered by Kaunas University of Technology. Two years registration agreement costs $209. There no any specific restrictions or requirements for the registration under .lt ccTLD, even the local presence is not necessary.

Lithuania, that boast about a variety of digital literacy programs and a rural access provision program for public authorities, hospitals, schools, museums, households and businesses existing, is taking a two-pronged approach to ICT development School ICT usage ranks among the lowest in Europe, as of Economist Intelligence Unit data, with all ICT education indicators ranking in the EU bottom 5.

Despite ICT capacity in the country is increasingly being rolled out, the newly connected households and businesses cannot fully exploit an online market for commercial, multimedia, downloading or networking services. The adoption the newest online services by Lithuanians have fostered a specific culture of videoconferencing, online reading, and limited downloading.

As for the e-commerce sector in the country it is growing steadily with online selling above the EU average, but there has been as little integration of eBusiness process internally as well as externally with partners and suppliers. But actually, the businesses and enterprises adoption of the newest technologies is unsteady. Besides, Lithuanian employees have relatively high computer skills, that howevermake half the EU average. Concerning eCommerce eSignatures, a vital mechanism for digital legal framework, they are increasingly used by more and more businesses, and the level of usage, according to EIU, is well above the EU average.

Slightly fewer than 100 companies that offer B2C e-commerce services in Lithuania are operating successfully. Moreover, their number is constantly increasing as e-commerce is gaining more and more popularity amid Lithuanians. Meantime, the companies are starting to treat ecommerce as an additional marketing channel. The prices of ownership of e-commerce solutions are constantly contracting due to competition of e-commerce solutions providers, cheaper hosting services in web servers, also open source e-commerce applications.

Below there is a brief list of the companies delivering e-commerce services in Lithuania:

• UAB Skaitos Komputeriu Servisas (SKS)
• UAB Aiva Sistema
• UAB Gaumina
• UAB Linkarta
• UAB Megalogika
• UAB Infosistema
• UAB Penki kontinentai
• UAB Assis
• UAB M2 technologijos

Being one the European ICT leaders, Lithuania still under the EU average concerning some aspects. That is also one of the factors making the country bolster the infrastructure development, in a move to achieve the leadership. Nevertheless, Lithuania managed to outstrip majority of its neighbors.