Albania's telephone density was the lowest inEurope,at 1.4 units for every 100 inhabitants.Tirana accounted for about 13,000 of the country's 42,000 direct lines; Durrës, the main port city, ranked second with 2,000 lines; the rest were concentrated inShkodër, Elbasan, Vlorë, Gjirokastër, and other towns. At one time,each village had a telephone but during the land redistribution of the early 1990s peasants knocked out service to about 1,000 villages by removing telephone wire for fencing. Most of Albania's telephones were obsolete, low-quality East European models,some dating from the 1940s; workers at a Tirana factory assembled a small number of telephones from Italian parts.

In the early 1990s,Albania had 240 microwave circuits toItaly and 180 toGreece carrying international calls. The Albanian telephone company had also installed two U-20 Italtel digital exchanges. The exchange in Tirana handled international,national,and local calls; the Durrës exchange handled only local calls. Two United States firms handled direct-dial calls from the United States to Tirana. At present the land lines are overloaded and it is difficult to receive a telephone number. As a result, the number ofmobile phones has skyrocketed in the bigger cities.

Albania has the lowest rate of telephone use per capita in Europe with roughly 10 lines per 100 people as of 2008ITU statistics. As a result,cellular phone use is very common throughout the country. The numbering plan has constantly evolved during the last 30 years. Tirana has passed to a seven digit plan as of 2008 from a four digit plan in the communist period by gradually adding one digit.