The index shows that some key EU connectivity targets for 2020 and 2025 are likely to be missed.
Background: The European Commission assesses the progress against its Digital Agenda targets through the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which is published annually and measures EU countries’ performance across five key pillars (connectivity, human capital, use of internet services, integration of digital technology, and digital public services). On 11 June 2020, the EC published the latest iteration of the index, based on data from 2019.
Latvia and Spain score the highest in broadband coverage: Focusing on the connectivity pillar, Latvia had the highest score in fixed broadband coverage, which takes into account the coverage of ‘fast broadband’ (i.e. 30Mbps or higher) together with very-high capacity networks, i.e. gigabit broadband. Second place is taken by Spain, by far the best performing of the EU5 in this area, as a result of the country’s progress in FTTH deployment. By contrast, the UK occupies 22nd place, with a particularly poor score in fixed broadband coverage due to the still relatively low availability of FTTH at the time.
Some key Digital Agenda targets are likely to be missed: Despite recent progress, the index shows that the EU is likely to miss out on two targets set out in the Digital Agenda, which aimed for 50% of households to have a connection of at least 100Mbps. Between 2018 and 2019, uptake grew by seven percentage points but it is still at 27%, making the 50% target highly unrealistic for 2020. While current coverage of 100Mbps is at 66.5% of households, the 2025 target to achieve full coverage of 100Mbps connections is also unrealistic, due to the wide gap between rural and urban areas, and to the slow progress made by several countries towards this objective, including, among others, Greece and Italy.
