The Broadband Coverage in Europe study is designed to monitor the progress of EU Member States towards their specific broadband coverage objectives, i.e. ‘Universal Broadband Coverage with speeds at least 30 Mbps by 2020’ and ‘Broadband Coverage of 50% of households with speeds at least 100 Mbps by 2020’.
This report covers thirty-one countries across Europe – the EU 28, plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland - and analyses the availability of nine broadband technologies (DSL, VDSL, cable modem, DOCSIS 3, FTTP, WiMAX, HSPA, LTE and satellite) across each market, at national and rural levels.
The collected data shows that over 218 million EU households (99.9%) had access to at least one of the main fixed or mobile broadband access technologies at the end of June 2016 (excluding satellite). This equates to a 0.1 percentage point increase, or 1.4 million additional households, compared to the end of June 2015. Limitations remain in terms of rural broadband coverage. By mid-2016, fixed broadband services were available to 92.7% of rural households across the EU. This is nearly 5 percentage points less than total fixed coverage. Nevertheless, the gap between rural and national coverage, for both fixed and NGA technologies, is declining compared to previous editions of the study suggesting increasing investment in rural broadband.
Resources: Final report and Data tables
Tags: Digital rights