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Report: State of 4G in Europe

January 16, 2018

S&P Global Market Intelligence has released its latest State of European 4G report. Key highlights from the report include:

  • Mobile subscribers and 4G penetration are growing across the European continent, but substantial regional differences exist across the 15 countries analysed
  • Kagan, a unit within S&P Global Market Intelligence, estimated 4G subscribers for 14 of 15 countries covered in Europe (excluding Russia), and found 4G subs rose to 228.4 million at year-end 2016, up 43 per cent year-over-year from 2015
  • Nordics, UK, Spain and France lead 4G uptake in terms of adoption rates
  • Northern European operators deployed LTE early, particularly in the Nordics, which explains their lower relative 4G growth in 2016 relative to Southern and Eastern European markets where LTE coverage developed more slowly
  • Kagan estimates European mobile subs expanded to 849.3 million at year-end 2016, and mobile penetration reached an estimated 172 per cent of total pops in the 14 European countries for which we have 4G estimates
  • High mobile penetration in Southern and Eastern Europe is driven by a legacy of prepaid-dominant subscriber bases in these regions
  • Mobile penetration has been falling in Northern European countries and the Nordics due to these markets’ transition from prepaid to post-paid contracts, and greater 4G penetration
  • Sweden and Finland stand out as post-paid dominant markets where mobile penetration is being driven up by the organic growth of highly M2M connections
  • The composition of European mobile subs at year-end 2016 shows a continent where post-paid contracts are the dominant connection type at 52 per cent of total subs, followed by prepaid at 34 per cent

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