The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) paints a mixed picture across the EU, but overall progress is insufficient.
Background: The European Commission publishes the index once a year. It measures the progress of EU Member States towards a digital economy and society, mainly on the basis of Eurostat data, across five policy areas. It helps EU Member States identify areas requiring priority investment and action.
The 2019 results are in: This week, the EC published the 2019 iteration of the index. With regard to connectivity, the index shows mixed results, with the EC admitting that recent improvements do not go far enough to address fast-growing needs. In particular, coverage of ultrafast broadband (FTTP and cable connections above 100Mbps) is now at 60% of households throughout the EU, only three percentage points up on the previous year; and the gap between urban and rural areas is very wide in almost all the EU28. Coverage of 30Mbps connections stood at 83%; it is unlikely it will reach 100% by 2020, as envisaged by the Digital Agenda targets. Digital skills are also lagging behind, with more than one third of the European workforce still lacking ‘basic digital skills’.
5G spectrum allocation is worryingly behind: The DESI index finds that only 14% of the ‘5G pioneer spectrum’ across the 700MHz, 3.4–3.8GHz, and 26GHz bands has been assigned, and ten member states out of 28 have published national 5G roadmaps. It will take a significant change in pace to meet the target set in the Communication for a European Gigabit Society of 2016, which aims to have a fully fledged 5G service commercially available at least in one major city in every EU country by 2020.
