Scandinavia Leading Europe's Broadband Revolution
Sweden and Denmark are the European countries most likely to have households connecting to the Internet via broadband, according to research by NetValue.
Sweden and Denmark are the European countries most likely to have households connecting to the Internet via broadband, according to research by NetValue.
NetValue examined Internet use in eight European countries, and found that Britain ranked seventh with only 2.3 percent of households connected to broadband in August of 2001. Most of Britain’s broadband users use cable modems (1.7 percent of U.K. households), while 0.5 percent connected through ADSL and 0.1 percent using satellite.
When it comes to ISDN usage, another Scandinavian country leads the way. More than half of the households in Norway (54.7 percent) use ISDN, with Germany in second position.
| European Broadband Breakdown August 2001 |
|||||
| Country | Total Broadband |
Type of Broadband | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cable | Satellite | ADSL | T1/ Leased Line |
||
| Sweden | 13.8% | 3.3% | 0.0% | 5.5% | 5.0% |
| Denmark | 13.2% | 6.6% | 0.0% | 6.6% | 0.0% |
| Germany | 7.8% | 3.6% | 0.0% | 4.2% | 0.0% |
| France | 6.4% | 3.2% | 0.4% | 2.8% | 0.0% |
| Spain | 6.2% | 2.7% | 0.0% | 3.5% | 0.0% |
| Norway | 5.1% | 3.5% | 0.2% | 1.4% | 0.0% |
| U.K. | 2.3% | 1.7% | 0.1% | 0.5% | 0.0% |
| Italy | 0.9% | 0.5% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.0% |
| Source: NetValue | |||||
According to a study by the European Commission, cable modems and ADSL will rapidly become the leading technologies used to access the Internet at high speeds in Europe, but there will be significant differences in the pace of broadband adoption among European countries.
The adoption of broadband will be fastest in those European countries that have the highest levels of Internet penetration; that have liberalized the telecommunications market; and have the highest degree of cross-platform competition, the study found.
By 2005, the study predicts cable modems and ADSL will together account for more than half of all Internet connections to home and small businesses. But it also found that cable and ADSL will be only transitory solutions because they may not have enough capacity for multimedia applications. Fiber optic broadband connections, on the other hand, could take advantage of this because they provide almost unlimited bandwidth.
The study found that by 2010 fiber optic could account for as much as 30 percent of all Internet connections to homes and small businesses in the European Union.
