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The European Commission (EC) recently published their annual 2025 study of broadband coverage in Europe, which reveals how the EU’s fixed gigabit broadband (FTTP and Hybrid Fibre Coax) and 5G mobile networks compare across all of its 27 countries. We compare this with the United Kingdom below.
The EU’s main target for digital infrastructure, which remains very similar to the UK’s, is for every European household to have access to “high-speed internet” (downloads of 100Mbps+) coverage by the end of 2025 and gigabit (1000Mbps+) connectivity by the end of 2030. The new report, which is largely based on data from last year (mid-2024), is intended to help gauge the progress toward achieving those goals.
The EU’s Broadband and Mobile Targets (“Digital Decade“)
The current vision for 2025 relies on three main strategic objectives:
➤ Gigabit connectivity for all of the main socio-economic drivers;
➤ uninterrupted 5G coverage for all urban areas and major terrestrial transport paths;
➤ access to connectivity offering at least 100 Mbps for all European households.
The ambition of the Digital Decade is that by 2030:
➤ all European households are covered by a Gigabit network (e.g. DOCSIS 3.1 + FTTP);
➤ all populated areas are covered by 5G (at least).
By comparison, the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme currently aims to extend gigabit-capable broadband to reach 99% of UK premises by 2032 (recently delayed from the original goal of 2030). The public funding for this is focused upon aiding the final 10-20% of hardest to reach premises, where commercial deployments may struggle.
According to Ofcom’s latest data to January 2025 (here), some 98% of UK premises can access a 30Mbps+ (“superfast“) connection (up from 97% last year), while 86% (up from 80%) are able to access gigabit broadband (via FTTP and DOCSIS 3.1+) and that falls to 74% (up from 62%) when only looking at “full fibre” FTTP. Take note that, in the UK, DOCSIS 3.1 largely reflects Virgin Media’s urban Hybrid Fibre Coax (cable) network.
As for mobile networks, over 99% of UK premises (outdoor) have access to 4G (unchanged) and between 92-96% of premises can access 5G from at least one operator (up from 85-92%) – falling to just 22-44% in outdoor 5G areas where all four operators exist (up from 16-28%). However, it’s important to stress that the EU’s comparative data below is about 6 months older than Ofcom’s data above.
Overall, the EU is now in a roughly similar sort of place to the United Kingdom, with total FTTP coverage of 69.24% (up from 64% last year), gigabit (VHCN) broadband coverage of 82.49% (up from 78.8%) and 5G population coverage of 94.35% (up from 89.3%). But we do have to remember that quite a few EU states have been building FTTP, at scale, for 5-10 years longer than the UK, although we’re clearly now catching up and even exceeding quite a few countries.
The main focus of the EU’s report is clearly on 5G and gigabit / VHCN (FTTP + DOCSIS 3.1) coverage, with the differences between EU states and the UK becoming much clearer in these areas once we drill down to the individual country level. In both cases, the UK would now reside somewhere around the middle of the tables below.
The other thing to consider is the split between rural and urban coverage. In the UK, some 57% of rural premises have access to a gigabit-capable broadband network, which drops to 55% for FTTP. By comparison, gigabit (VHCN) coverage of rural areas in the EU stands at 61.89%, with FTTP at 58.78%.
The full report contains a lot more data.
Broadband Coverage in Europe 2025 (State of Digital Decade)
https://digital-decade-desi.digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/datasets/desi/charts