The European Commission (EC) has published new statistics that reveal how almost one third (29%) of broadband ISP lines in Europe during July 2010 were delivering download speeds of at least 10Mbps (Megabits per second), which is up significantly from 15% in July 2009. Some 5% of lines also had average speeds at or above 30Mbps, yet only 0.5% offered at least 100Mbps.

The news is extremely encouraging, especially with the EU's Digital Agenda (here) aiming to make "basic" broadband provision compulsory by 2013, with a minimum access requirement of 30Mbps by 2020. It also wants 50% of European households to have speeds at or above 100Mbps by the same date (2020), which is a somewhat more tedious target to meet.

At present the UK can't even agree on what "super-fast" broadband actually is (see our related article), nor a clear target for how many people should get it. However our government does at least aim to make a minimum broadband download speed of 2Mbps available to everybody by 2015.


Elsewhere the number of broadband lines in Europe grew by 8% (9 Million lines) between July 2009 and July 2010, although it grew by 11% in the previous year. Today there are 128 Million fixed broadband lines in the EU out of 220 Million households, which means that approximately half of all households have broadband.


The Netherlands and Denmark continue to be world leaders in broadband take-up, reaching about 80% of households. Nine EU countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden and UK) have levels of broadband take up above the USA (US levels are 26.4 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, according to OECD May 2010 statistics).

As usual DSL ( ADSL , ADSL2+ etc. ) technology, the old warhorse of internet access, remains the most common form of broadband and accounts for 100 Million lines. However fibre optic and Cable Modem DOCSIS 3.0 solutions are beginning to take over.

Superfast 100Mbps+ Fibre-to-the-Home ( FTTH ) grew by 40% between July 2009 and July 2010, but currently only represents 1.7% of the total lines in Europe as it is present only in a handful of countries (such as Sweden, where 24% of broadband lines are FTTH).

Elsewhere Mobile Broadband access is also on the rise after increasing its EU penetration by 45% over the past year to reach a total of 6.1%. This might seem low to people in the UK, where Mobile Broadband has become common place because we were one of the first markets, between 2007 and 2008, to make it affordable.

EU Broadband Speeds and Penetration Study July 2010 (PDF)
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=719

The Digital Agenda (September 2010 News Summary) includes a Commission Recommendation on regulated access to Next Generation Access (NGA) networks to ensures a balance between the need to encourage investment and the need to safeguard competition, a proposal for a opening up more radio spectrum for use by Mobile Broadband services and a Broadband Communication on encouraging investment.