Europe's Digital Revolution Speeds Up

Nearly 20 percent of European households buy bundled telecom packages, according to an EU-wide survey of 27,000 representative households published today. Almost 30 percent are now connected to the Internet via high-speed broadband links and households increasingly use mobile phones as fixed lines become less popular. Seventeen percent of Europeans having a home Internet connection use it for Internet telephony.

"Europe's digital economy is growing strongly as more and more households embrace convergence between fixed, mobile and Internet services," said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. "The challenge of this year's reform of the EU's telecom rules will be to respond to this rapidly changing technological environment while enhancing at the same time effective competition."

The key findings of the EU-wide survey published by the Commission today are the following:

    * Nearly 20 percent of Europeans buy two or more telecom products from a single service provider, the combination of fixed telephony and Internet access being the most common.
    * Increasingly, users are switching from fixed to mobile telephony: although the percentage of households with at least one mobile phone remains fairly stable at 81 percent, the share of mobile-only households is rising in the EU (22 percent, up 4 percent) while the proportion of households with at least one fixed line decreases (72 percent, down 5 percent).
    * Broadband is rapidly becoming more popular in the EU (28 percent, up 6 percent) while narrowband is less so (12 percent, down 3 percent).
    * Most households access the Internet via an ADSL line (53 percent, up 4 percent) and 34 percent of broadband connections are wireless.
    * 17 percent of Europeans who have a home Internet connection say that it is used for making phone calls. This proportion is twice as large in new member states .
    * As more households connect to the Internet (42 percent, up 4 percent), the reason for not connecting is increasingly non-financial with 45 percent saying that it is simply because they are not interested.
    * Twenty-eight percent of Europeans have suffered significantly from problems with spam, viruses and spyware, underlining the need for the EU and member states to be more proactive in fighting illegal activities.
    * Overall, most have installed antivirus software (81 percent) and antispam software (60 percent).
    * Forty percent (up 5 percent) know that the single European emergency number 112 enables them to reach emergency services everywhere in the EU, but many member states need to improve the practical implementation of 112.
    * Sixty-three percent of Europeans are free-to-air TV, and not pay-TV subscribers. Fewer households subscribe to pay-TV in countries where they receive television through an aerial or a satellite, than in predominately cable TV countries.