Report: Only 20% of Euro homes are 100Mbps
June 12, 2019
Just 20 per cent of EU households subscribe to broadband of at least 100 Mbps, compared to the EU’s goal of 50 per cent with ‘ultrafast’ by 2020.
The figures are part of the latest Digital Economy and Society Index from the European Commission. The Commission said it shows it needs to take action to accelerate the growth of ultrafast.
100 Mbps services increased by around 5 per cent points in the year to June 2018. The figures show around 60 percent of households were covered by networks offering at least 100 Mbps by the same date. However, only Sweden and Portugal had achieved the target set back in 2010 of over 50 per cent take-up of the services. The EU has since upgraded its targets to 100 per cent access to 100 Mbps broadband by 2025.
Lowering the minimum speed to 30 Mbps shows 41 percent of EU households used fast broadband as of mid-2018. In the Netherlands, Malta and Belgium more than two-thirds of homes already subscribed to fast broadband, while in Greece, Cyprus and Croatia take-up remained below 20 per cent.
Access to the faster broadband improved in the past year to 83 per cent of households, mainly due to the expansion of VDSL networks. By mid-2018, VDSL had the largest ‘next-generation’ coverage (>30 Mbps) at 57 per cent of EU homes, followed by cable (44 per cent) and FTTP (30 per cent). While cable coverage only marginally increased last year, VDSL and FTTP went up by 3 percentage points.
In 11 EU states, the fast broadband was available to at least 90 per cent of homes, led by Malta, the Netherlands and Belgium with near 100 percent coverage. On the other hand, in France, Lithuania, Greece and Poland, less than two-thirds of homes could access speeds of at least 30 Mbps.