The report indicates that some Northern EU countries are world leaders in broadband deployment. Notably, Denmark and the Netherlands are at the top of the international league with penetration rates respectively over 34% and 33%.
Also Finland, Sweden, the UK and France, among others, are ahead of global actors such as US and Japan. However, the majority of EU states still lag behind, with high-speed network deployment below the EU average of 20%. Among the most developed European economies, Italy, Spain and Ireland record significant delays.
The Commission regularly publishes such progress reports, with its previous edition registering an average EU broadband penetration rate at 18.2%.
Altogether, the EU bloc continues to chase world leaderrs like Switzerland, South Korea, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Australia, US and Japan.
Information Society Commissioner Reding’s recipe to close the gap is to lower national incumbent operators' share of the market.
"Incumbent operators hold more than 46% of broadband lines," reads the press release issued by the Commission. "Competition is limited for access to the fixed network which is still provided to 86.5% of customers over the incumbent’s infrastructure," underlined Commissioner Reding.
However, the incumbents, such as France Telecom, Telefonica or Telecom Italia, view the glass from the other perspective and highlight that "alternative operators hold more of 50% of the market shares", according to a position paper of ETNO, the European incumbents’ association.
While both are right, the proposed solutions are conflicting. Reding wants functional separation, which if applied by national regulators would oblige telecoms giants to split the management of their networks and services activities.
Conversely, incumbents insist on the necessity of new investments to allow Europe to catch up with its world competitors. They argue that only big companies have the strength to support heavy structural innovations, but that they will not do this if they are made smaller by new regulations.
