European countries are outstripping the US in terms of broadband take-up, but their broadband connections don’t match the speeds of those in Asian countries.
Nine European Union member states, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK, have broadband take-up above the US level of 26.4 subscriptions per 100 individuals, the European Commission announced.
But Europe still lags behind Asian countries, particularly Japan and South Korea, in broadband speeds. In July, just 29% of EU broadband lines had speeds of at least 10Mbps, and only 5% of lines had average speeds at or above 30Mbps.
The Commission wants to see all broadband connections at speeds of least 30Mbps by 2020, and has set a target of at least half of European households subscribing to speeds above 100Mbps.
It plans to tackle this target with a focus on fibre-based next-generation networks. Currently only 1% of Europeans have a high-speed fibre internet connection at home, compared to 12% of Japanese and 15% of South Koreans.
The Commission also wants to reassign radio frequencies for faster wireless services.
“We need to do more to reach our very fast broadband targets. In particular, we need urgent agreement on our proposal to ensure radio spectrum is available for mobile broadband, for which demand is growing very fast,” said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes.
The new statistics also show that between July 2009 and July 2010, the number of broadband lines continued to grow throughout the EU by 8%. As of July 2010 around 128 million of the total 220 million households in the EU had fixed broadband lines. The Netherlands and Denmark continue to be world leaders in broadband take up with nearly 40 lines per 100 citizens, reaching about 80% of households. Greece and the Czech Republic made the most progress in per-capita growth in the last year.
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