EU survey shows significant increase in Wi-Fi use and Internet telephony
An EU-wide survey of 27,000 households revealed that almost 30% are now connected to the Internet via high-speed broadband networks. If you exclude the new member states, that percentage is much higher (for example, in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. 17% of Europeans who have a home Internet connection use it for Internet telephony. The number of mobile-only (no fixed line) households has also increased, but especially among the new member states. The most popular form of mobile subscription is prepaid. Nearly 20% of European households buy bundled telecom packages, according to an EU-wide survey of 27,000 representative households published today. Almost 30% are now connected to the Internet via high-speed broadband links and households increasingly use mobile phones as fixed lines become less popular. 17% of Europeans having a home Internet connection use it for Internet telephony.
“Europe’s digital economy is growing strongly as more and more households embrace convergence between fixed, mobile and Internet services,” said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. “The challenge of this year’s reform of the EU’s telecom rules will be to respond to this rapidly changing technological environment while enhancing at the same time effective competition.”
The key findings of the EU-wide survey published by the Commission today are the following:
* Nearly 20% of Europeans buy two or more telecom products from a single service provider, the combination of fixed telephony and Internet access being the most common.
* Increasingly, users are switching from fixed to mobile telephony: although the percentage of households with at least one mobile phone remains fairly stable at 81%,
* Broadband is rapidly becoming more popular in the EU (28%, up 6%) while narrowband is less so (12%, down 3%). Most households access the Internet via an ADSL line (53%, up 4%) and 34% of broadband connections are wireless.
* 17% of Europeans who have a home Internet connection say that it is used for making phone calls. This proportion is twice as large in new Member States.
* As more households connect to the Internet (42%, up 4%), the reason for not connecting is increasingly non-financial with 45% saying that it is simply because they are not interested.
* 63% of Europeans are free-to-air TV, and not pay-TV subscribers. Fewer households subscribe to pay-TV in countries where they receive television through an aerial or a satellite, than in predominately cable TV countries.
17% of Europeans who have an Internet connection at home say that someone in their household uses the Internet for making phone calls. Most respondents call to other users who are subscribed to the same Internet phone service (12%).
There is a significant difference between the old and the new Member States. While 13% within the EU15 use the possibility to call over the internet,
Accordingly, the highest proportions of the use of Internet phone calls are found in Lithuania, Latvia and Bulgaria where in over half of the households with Internet access someone uses this service. Conversely, the shares remain below 10% in
Greece and Ireland as well as in the candidate country Croatia.
34% of EU27 households with internet access at home have a Wi-Fi router. There has been a significant increase compared to the winter 2006 study where 27% of the EU25 households indicated that they had this utility (compared to 35% within
the EU25 this year).
Wi-Fi technology appears to be most widespread in Luxembourg, Spain and France where over half of households with Internet access have a Wi-Fi router. Conversely, less than 20% of households in Latvia, Greece, Lithuania, Slovenia and Poland benefit from this technology.
The use of a Wi-Fi router has increased or remained stable in 22 out of 29 countries polled. The increase in the use of the Wi-Fi technology among households that have internet access is particularly high in Hungary (+25 percentage points), Spain (+16) and Luxembourg (+15).
22% of European households have only mobile phone access in comparison to 15% of households that benefit only from access to fixed telephony. An increase of 4 percentage points is observed in comparison to the winter 2006 study.
In contrast with the fact that the overall mobile phone penetration rate is higher within the EU15 than in the NMS12, the mobile-only rate is significantly higher in the new Member States (34%) than in the 15 old Member States (20%).
Over the last year before this study was carried out, the share of
This increase is particularly strong in Italy, Hungary the Czech Republic, Estonia and Austria.
The largest segment of European households use mobile phones via a pre-paid arrangement (37%), followed by 30% having a contract and 15% having both. This pattern is in line with the one perceived in the winter 2006 study. The results between countries vary significantly ranging from 81% of Maltese households having access via a pre-paid arrangement to 86% of Finnish households having a contract scheme.
- - - - - - -
The survey findings will feed into the ongoing public debate on the reform of the EU Telecom Rules, planned for summer this year.
The full text of the EU-wide household survey can be found here.
It’s a long document (188 pages) but the statistics are fascinating. The differences among the member states - old and new - are staggering but the new member states are catching up quickly.
Loading ...