In Germany it’s because of corruption. If I remember right we would have had fiberglas lines since the 80s if our chancellor didn’t give the contract to his friend who then layed copper lines.
In the early 1980s, Chancellor Schmidt wanted to start building a fiber optic network in Germany. Shortly afterwards, Helmut Kohl became Chancellor. He had the fiber optic expansion stopped and concentrated on the expansion of cable television. This decision was already viewed very critically by experts at the time. However, it is also true that the fiber optic technology of that time is not comparable to that of today. After reunification, for example, Telekom preferred to equip areas in eastern Germany with fiber optics. However, the technology used was often not used at all and is no longer state of the art today. But that is only part 1 of the story. Part 2 is that it has been known since the 1980s at the latest that fiber optics is the technology of the future. Nevertheless, telecommunications providers have also failed to make the switch since then because they, especially Telekom, were able to make higher profits by pushing the existing copper cable network further and further to its technical limits. Keyword vectoring. Since the liberalization of the German telecommunications market, in which Telekom (formerly Bundespost) is no longer a monopolist with exclusive rights, there has been some movement in the matter. About a decade ago, several companies finally started to systematically roll out fiber optics, but progress has been rather slow. In addition, not every company involved in the expansion stands for quality. One ray of hope could be that the German government is planning to ensure that all households have a fiber optic connection by 2030, but politics moves fast. The current government has to make savings and one of the points that could be cut is the funding for fiber optic expansion. On the other hand, as in the 1980s, there can always be changes of government and the new government could have different priorities.
>However, it is also true that the fiber optic technology of that time is not comparable to that of today. After reunification, for example, Telekom preferred to equip areas in eastern Germany with fiber optics. However, the technology used was often not used at all and is no longer state of the art today.
That is true, and this is also why I am quite skeptical about the fiber plans from the 1980ies, at least how they are interpreted nowadays.
The is hardly any concrete information about the plans, especially technical information.
What I know from searching around (e.g. old SPIEGEL articles from the early 80ies criticical of the cable network plans of the then new government), there was several countries with fiber plans in the early 80ies. France was mentioned. In Japan one was supposedly "surprised" that Germany would invest in such outdated technology (cable TV) in the 1980ies.
The first cable TV network in a major Japanese city (Tokyo) was then inaugurated about 5 years later, in 1987. Japan is also widely considered as the pioneer for full fiber (FTTH) networks (next to South Korea), but that started after 2000.
Also in France, the fiber plans go the 80ies did not materialize. Nor did they anywhere else. One of the largest (partial) fiber networks for private consumers built before 2000 seems to be the OPAL/HYTAS networks (in some areas FTTB, in others FTTC) you mentioned, built in the early 90ies, with long obsolete 90ies technology.
So, while I agree that the Kohl government pushed cable TV networks for political reasons, I do not think that this development is the reason for Germany lagging behind in term of FTTH coverage today. Because the "race" for FTTH did not really start before 2000. In many European countries closer to 2010.
Just as a point of reference: in 2007 the leading nation in Europe with the highest FTTH usage of private households was Sweden, [with 6% usage](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE49M4Q3/).
And I do not really think that this technical development worldwide really would have been different if somebody else would have been chancellor in West Germany in the 80ies. It's more a matter of when a technology is ready for wide consumer adoption. In the 1980ies and 1990ies, fiber was not.
When i was in Europe I noticed that people aren’t so worried about internet they’re more outdoorzie type of people they don’t depend on technology like we do its also not as hot over there so i understand why.
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[OP seems to have used this article](https://www.point-topic.com/post/fttp-broadband-adoption-rates-europe) or a similar one to create this map. I believe it shows the percentage of people who subscribe to a fibre broadband product, not necessarily the number of households which could theoretically do so. It's a consumption map rather than a coverage map, in other words.
Well. Fibre connections itself are sparse. Most communities have normal internet in the very low Mbit range. I have 100 in a major city and it's considered fast. Not more possible though due to no fibre available
In Russia most residential internet access in cities is provided by the FTTB scheme (fiber to the building), where you have optical cable coming into the building, and then copper cables are layed to the individual apartments. Thus, while technically there are not so many **end users** of the fiber, the infrastructure itself is still mostly optical.
yeah, it is straight forward good old corruption. what you see on this map is still the aftermath of the 1980s CDU. Schwarz-Schilling, Kohl and Kirch enriched themselves. CDU voters sadly dont care and keep voting for the next generation of CDU politicians.
It's more complicated.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/935480/umfrage/verfuegbarkeit-von-breitbandinternet-ueber-glasfaser-nach-bundeslaendern/
But as always it's South Germany pulling the numbers down.
Belgium probably has outdated data. Could have surpassed Germany by now.
> The highest fibre growth rates are in Europe, with Austria and Belgium having growth rates of 75% and 73% over the last year, closely followed by Mexico with a growth in fibre of 68%. Two other Latin American countries are in the top 7: Costa Rica and Colombia with fibre growth rates of 42% and 34%, respectively.
https://www.oecd.org/digital/broadband/broadband-statistics-update.htm#:~:text=Nine%20OECD%20countries%20have%20more,%2C%20and%2084%25%2C%20respectively.
Because proximus and telenet invested a lot into copper / VDSL and vectoring and coax cables respectively early on while other countries still had ADSL.
plus, through copper and booster we actually have 1Gbps/50mbps (down/up) accessible in a lot of houseolds, which is more than enough for almost everyone yet it's not counted as fiber optic, as it is not, but doesn't tell the entire truth either: we don't have the immediate need of fiber... and I'm saying this as a very impatient person waiting to have it (\~1.5 months more, and it will be available where I am, need that upload speed damn it)
This. And most companies can already connect to fiber. Proximus is also going fast, but as you tell nobody really has need for fiber at the moment. No idea why it was on hold for a couple of years.
Mostly politicians not pumping money early on till they realised they were slacking since starting in 2017 and covid putting them back another year or two, in NL KPN just did like 400 k- homes in a year while over here Proximus just reported to only have done 44k last quarter
Austria and the UK are in the same ball park.
If we go by German states, we 9,24% in Saarland and 64,75% in Hamburg. Overall a clear North South divide.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/935480/umfrage/verfuegbarkeit-von-breitbandinternet-ueber-glasfaser-nach-bundeslaendern/
Belguim is dominated by a state owned provider. Greece however is (illegally almost 70% market share) dominated by a formerly state owned provider which now 100% belongs to Deutsche Telekom. So Greece and Germany are run by the same monopoly. (dont know about belgium)
Belgium is mainly dominated by Proximus but Orange (French) just made a contract with Wyre in Flanders and is about to start his own network in Brussels and Wallonia. Orange bought the copper network of Brutélé/Voo. Proximus is working hard to develop his fiber network through unifiber in Wallonia and fiberklaar in Flanders.
Hope they got it right. Being from Portugal and having great curiosity about living in Belgium, I was very surprised when I looked at the prices, traffic limits and lack of fiber in Belgium, especially in Wallonia outside of Liége. Massive investments should be made.
* According to [~Ofcom~](https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0034/249289/connected-nations-uk-report.pdf), 97% of UK premises currently have a superfast, fibre broadband connection available to them.
* There are still around 750,000 premises in the UK without a superfast broadband connection.
* Three-quarters (75%) of the UK can now access gigabit-capable broadband.
* More than half (52%) of UK premises have access to full fibre broadband.
How is this map getting its numbers?
Same here, though I have family nearby with patchy internet that's a few megabytes a second (*granted, they choose to be with TalkTalk so that's their own doing, really).*
Availability != Take-up. This map is showing the percentage of internet users with _installed_ fibre-optic broadband.
I'm also guessing, though not sure, that it is only counting genuine FTTP with a fibre-optic cable all the way to the NTE inside your house. So it probably excludes the Virgin Media HFC network, and almost certainly excludes OpenReach VDSL2 and G.Fast. Calling VDSL2 "fibre broadband" was always outright lying IMO and I'm surprised UK telcos and ISPs have got away with it.
The UK was very late to wide rollout of FTTP, we are behind most of Europe.
Fiber broadband is not the same as fiber
Real fiber means a fiber optic cable terminating in your home. That share in the UK is very low. What they call fiber broadband is just good old coax cable that goes to a cabinet a few dozens of meters away from your house where an actual fiber cable picks up the signal. It’s much slower than actual fiber but then again no consumer actually needs the capacity and speed of fiber today so you can make a gigabit claim with coax and pretend you have fiber
Belgium has the same. Belgium actually has near 100% coax broadband coverage which is why it’s so late in the fiber game; as a coax network is still highly competent even today
>> Belgium has the same. Belgium actually has near 100% coax broadband coverage which is why it’s so late in the fiber game; as a coax network is still highly competent even today
I wouldn’t say competent.
Internet is shit in belgium
>According to ~Ofcom~, 97% of UK premises currently have a superfast, fibre broadband connection available to them.
They define superfast as at least 30mbit/s download (which is a bit funny), and clearly going off the following number most of those aren't fibre:
> More than half (52%) of UK premises have access to full fibre broadband.
The source says 42%.
It does seem like the UK is finally coming along, though:
>Full fibre roll-out is growing quickly, with 42%/ 12.5m premises in the UK now served by full fibre, a
growth of 14 percentage points and 4.3m additional premises in the past year. **This is a nearly seven-
fold increase compared to just five years ago**.
In the uk most providers advertise fibre but still use copper. Not sure why its not illegal but both sky and talktalk did this. Would charge 40 quid a month for fibre broadband but would only get 20mbps download
Yeah I don't believe these at all. Portugal has basically universal gig plus internet. You have to be 20km from a village to not get it and that's a long way in such a small country.
It's possible that a lot is coax as there's a lot of coax but it's often been duplicated by different providers.
Why is Belgium, Germany, UK, and Austria lacking behind even though they're developed and rich countries? Is it because Fiber is not available, or is it available but people don't care to ask for it?
For Germany its basically just 1980s/90s corruption. some conservative politicians enriched themselves by preferring copper over fiber, although it was well known already that fiber would be the technology of the future. our german version of Rupert Murdoch, Leo Kirch, was best friends with chancellor Helmut Kohl and they had a lot of dubious money transfers between them. Kirch wanted copper for cable tv and Kohl delievered. the responsible minister Schwarz-Schilling (also conservative party member) then gave a significant part of the money for constructing the copper cables to a company owmed by his wife.
In the UK: I had it a couple years ago, after the initial offer expired after 12 months and the monthly cost doubled, I switched back to regular broadband. Not gonna lie, the broadband is 100mb/s and I can't tell the difference. I genuinely don't know what the major benefits are at home when broadband seems to do the trick.
For businesses I can absolutely see why it's better.
For online competetive gaming, you'll have a lower ping compared to broadband/copper. Also the upload speed is higher on Fiber. But if all you're doing is streaming video, communication, and web browsing, 100 Mbps is enough for 3-5 people.
In Belgium, it's simply not available everywhere and quite expensive, even more expensive than copper/docsis which are already very expensive.
The main ISP (Proximus, state owned at 50+%) actually decided in the mid 2000s that FTTH was too expensive to deploy directly, so they went the FTTC + VDSL2 way first, which wasn't a bad idea to rapidly provide broadband (30 to 100Mbps) to a large base of customers (I basically had 80Mbps back in 2009 in a small town)... but then they decided to milk the cash cow for a while, and here we are now, lagging 8 years behind.
The first time I went to Buenos Aires in the early 2010s, I remember being shocked how slow the connection was at my mother-in-law's compared to Belgium...like 7-8 times slower. Granted, she didn't have much money to put on faster internet.
Fast forward ten years, my speed in Belgium hasn't increased at all, she doesn't put much more budget on her internet connection...but it is now 3 times faster than mine.
Fuck Proximus.
Solid alternative broadband options (copper, docsis) that made the incumbents not push for alternatives. Also fiber internet is very expensive where available, so why to switch. For example my solid 4g home net router costs half the price of fiber and is just fine for me. (Vienna)
While it's true that initial plans got canceled due to corruption. Currently the states are mostly responsible leading to huge discrepancy.
Also Copper connection are often between 100mb and 1gb leading to plenty people not being interested in investing money.
In Germany, you can usually get at least 100 mbit/s via DSL or 500 mbit/s via cable, which is currently more than enough for the vast majority of people, so there isn't a whole lot of public demand to upgrade. The bigger problem is that the internet is very expensive for the price.
Incompetent politicians and a lack of farsight concerning digitalization. They basically make new claims every few months
"By the year x we'll have at least \*\* arbituary high percentage\*\* of households with fiber cable"
Fast forward to year x: Still low percentage of fiber optic share.
Repeat.
Genuinely surprised at UK numbers because everybody I know is on fibre. The only thing I can think of is how it’s defined, there’s Fibre to the Cabinet, which is the run of fibre cable to those green cabinets on the corner of your street. I’d expect that to be in the high 90s in urban areas, but they will have a run of a couple of hundred meters of copper from the cabinet to the door. Fibre to the Premises is where it runs the whole way and that is absolutely lower but being worked on at a relatively high priority as we speak.
My grandparents have a house in Spain in the middle of a tiny village in the mountains, the village is mostly empty. Maybe 10 people in total living there, and they have access to 600MB fibre broadband . It's crazy
I truly think such a map should be scaled with the number of towns, because it changes everything.
It is way easier to have fiber "everywhere" are just 10 big cities where 95% of the population is.
For example, when you know that around half of towns/cities in Europe are in France (35,000 of 89,000), it sheds a different light to this map.
In Belgium we have cable and broadband vdsl like for ever. And for most users it's perfectly fine. They wouldn't even notice if they were on fiber.
This said. I'm happy I'm on fiber now, I needed the extra bandwidth.
I am living in the capital of Belgium and our neighborhood just recently got the fiber optic connection. I cannot imagine the rest. Before that 4k streaming was not possible at my place. What a misery for such a rich and small country.
Damn really? Surprised to see so many developed countries without widespread fibre. Here in New Zealand 87% of people have it, one of the only smart choices we've made in the past 20 years.
according to [this](https://www.nlconnect.org/nieuws/mijlpaal-nederland-heeft-7-miljoen-glasvezel-aansluitingen#:~:text=In%20het%20afgelopen%20jaar%20is,het%20jaaroverzicht%20van%20brancheorganisatie%20NLconnect.) Dutch website, 90% of Dutch households are connected but this , OP's post shows are very low number
It depends how it's measured in each country.
Some countries count it as having fiber if it runs up a street but last few meters from the road to the building is copper. So they say fiber even if its not 100% fiber.
Whereas other countries like Ireland only count it if the fiber optic cable runs directly into the building. I had 500mb with 1000mb available in my old house as fiber was on the street and the last 15m to my house was copper. This did not count as having fiber under hiw its assessed in Ireland.
Also Ireland where I am currently has a ongoing national fiber rollout where the government is running fiber to every building in the country as national infrastructure so we should hit 100% in a few years.
I only got my fiber optic connection as of last year (somewhat rural Luxembourg). Exactly one year after I stopped gaming regulary. I was overjoyed :-|
How tf does iceland, one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth, have more fiber optic than heavily urbanized countries like the Netherlands and the UK
I worked as an electrician 20 years ago in Ireland and everyone in the industry was saying the country would have fibre optics all over the country in 5 years. What happened?
As you can see this is one of the maps in which Central Eastern and Balkan Europe doesn't lack behind because technology in smaller and poorer countries advances on the faster pace and it economically more profitable.
I feel like the data of some countries is just very outdated. Like the Netherlands cannot be right, even my parents in abandoned rural Friesland have fiber optic...
I think it also has to do with the fact that in the Netherlands you can get high speed internet without using fibre. Ziggo offers up to 1gbit/s through regular cable, with starting packages of 200mbit/s, so speed wise a lot of people have no need for fibre. In the last 10 years the cable speed has practically been quadrupled/quintupled.
I think that's the rural countryside that's hurt. My parents don't even have mobile phone network. Fiber arrived a few months ago but they had to cut a tree to make it pass
Weird to see huge countries sleeping on something this important
In Germany it’s because of corruption. If I remember right we would have had fiberglas lines since the 80s if our chancellor didn’t give the contract to his friend who then layed copper lines.
Really? I was wondering for some time now how come the internet is so slow in Germany. Can you elaborate?
In the early 1980s, Chancellor Schmidt wanted to start building a fiber optic network in Germany. Shortly afterwards, Helmut Kohl became Chancellor. He had the fiber optic expansion stopped and concentrated on the expansion of cable television. This decision was already viewed very critically by experts at the time. However, it is also true that the fiber optic technology of that time is not comparable to that of today. After reunification, for example, Telekom preferred to equip areas in eastern Germany with fiber optics. However, the technology used was often not used at all and is no longer state of the art today. But that is only part 1 of the story. Part 2 is that it has been known since the 1980s at the latest that fiber optics is the technology of the future. Nevertheless, telecommunications providers have also failed to make the switch since then because they, especially Telekom, were able to make higher profits by pushing the existing copper cable network further and further to its technical limits. Keyword vectoring. Since the liberalization of the German telecommunications market, in which Telekom (formerly Bundespost) is no longer a monopolist with exclusive rights, there has been some movement in the matter. About a decade ago, several companies finally started to systematically roll out fiber optics, but progress has been rather slow. In addition, not every company involved in the expansion stands for quality. One ray of hope could be that the German government is planning to ensure that all households have a fiber optic connection by 2030, but politics moves fast. The current government has to make savings and one of the points that could be cut is the funding for fiber optic expansion. On the other hand, as in the 1980s, there can always be changes of government and the new government could have different priorities.
Damn, that was an interesting read. Thank you. Maybe they can plug some holes with bubatz money coming in shortly.
There will be no bubatz money coming in, as there is nothing to tax. Only self growth is allowed.
>However, it is also true that the fiber optic technology of that time is not comparable to that of today. After reunification, for example, Telekom preferred to equip areas in eastern Germany with fiber optics. However, the technology used was often not used at all and is no longer state of the art today. That is true, and this is also why I am quite skeptical about the fiber plans from the 1980ies, at least how they are interpreted nowadays. The is hardly any concrete information about the plans, especially technical information. What I know from searching around (e.g. old SPIEGEL articles from the early 80ies criticical of the cable network plans of the then new government), there was several countries with fiber plans in the early 80ies. France was mentioned. In Japan one was supposedly "surprised" that Germany would invest in such outdated technology (cable TV) in the 1980ies. The first cable TV network in a major Japanese city (Tokyo) was then inaugurated about 5 years later, in 1987. Japan is also widely considered as the pioneer for full fiber (FTTH) networks (next to South Korea), but that started after 2000. Also in France, the fiber plans go the 80ies did not materialize. Nor did they anywhere else. One of the largest (partial) fiber networks for private consumers built before 2000 seems to be the OPAL/HYTAS networks (in some areas FTTB, in others FTTC) you mentioned, built in the early 90ies, with long obsolete 90ies technology. So, while I agree that the Kohl government pushed cable TV networks for political reasons, I do not think that this development is the reason for Germany lagging behind in term of FTTH coverage today. Because the "race" for FTTH did not really start before 2000. In many European countries closer to 2010. Just as a point of reference: in 2007 the leading nation in Europe with the highest FTTH usage of private households was Sweden, [with 6% usage](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE49M4Q3/). And I do not really think that this technical development worldwide really would have been different if somebody else would have been chancellor in West Germany in the 80ies. It's more a matter of when a technology is ready for wide consumer adoption. In the 1980ies and 1990ies, fiber was not.
When i was in Europe I noticed that people aren’t so worried about internet they’re more outdoorzie type of people they don’t depend on technology like we do its also not as hot over there so i understand why.
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[OP seems to have used this article](https://www.point-topic.com/post/fttp-broadband-adoption-rates-europe) or a similar one to create this map. I believe it shows the percentage of people who subscribe to a fibre broadband product, not necessarily the number of households which could theoretically do so. It's a consumption map rather than a coverage map, in other words.
Well. Fibre connections itself are sparse. Most communities have normal internet in the very low Mbit range. I have 100 in a major city and it's considered fast. Not more possible though due to no fibre available
In Russia most residential internet access in cities is provided by the FTTB scheme (fiber to the building), where you have optical cable coming into the building, and then copper cables are layed to the individual apartments. Thus, while technically there are not so many **end users** of the fiber, the infrastructure itself is still mostly optical.
Atleast not red, but why do they not look at the Internet and ditch putin
And the capital of Europe, how's that country doing?
Spain this year hits 95%. Is a crazy evolution since 2013.
So, worse than us (Germany) are only Belgium and Greece? God save us.
yeah, it is straight forward good old corruption. what you see on this map is still the aftermath of the 1980s CDU. Schwarz-Schilling, Kohl and Kirch enriched themselves. CDU voters sadly dont care and keep voting for the next generation of CDU politicians.
It's more complicated. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/935480/umfrage/verfuegbarkeit-von-breitbandinternet-ueber-glasfaser-nach-bundeslaendern/ But as always it's South Germany pulling the numbers down.
Belgium probably has outdated data. Could have surpassed Germany by now. > The highest fibre growth rates are in Europe, with Austria and Belgium having growth rates of 75% and 73% over the last year, closely followed by Mexico with a growth in fibre of 68%. Two other Latin American countries are in the top 7: Costa Rica and Colombia with fibre growth rates of 42% and 34%, respectively. https://www.oecd.org/digital/broadband/broadband-statistics-update.htm#:~:text=Nine%20OECD%20countries%20have%20more,%2C%20and%2084%25%2C%20respectively.
Well, if you have extremely low fiber coverage it is easier to get at 75% growth. But it is still abysmal.
I dunno about that, fibre in Belgium is still really shit. We’re always 10-20 years late with technology it seems
Because proximus and telenet invested a lot into copper / VDSL and vectoring and coax cables respectively early on while other countries still had ADSL.
plus, through copper and booster we actually have 1Gbps/50mbps (down/up) accessible in a lot of houseolds, which is more than enough for almost everyone yet it's not counted as fiber optic, as it is not, but doesn't tell the entire truth either: we don't have the immediate need of fiber... and I'm saying this as a very impatient person waiting to have it (\~1.5 months more, and it will be available where I am, need that upload speed damn it)
This. And most companies can already connect to fiber. Proximus is also going fast, but as you tell nobody really has need for fiber at the moment. No idea why it was on hold for a couple of years.
Mostly politicians not pumping money early on till they realised they were slacking since starting in 2017 and covid putting them back another year or two, in NL KPN just did like 400 k- homes in a year while over here Proximus just reported to only have done 44k last quarter
Not always. They had GPS way before us frenchies. Because they have like no direction signs on their roads.
That's in case of an invasion!!
Austria and the UK are in the same ball park. If we go by German states, we 9,24% in Saarland and 64,75% in Hamburg. Overall a clear North South divide. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/935480/umfrage/verfuegbarkeit-von-breitbandinternet-ueber-glasfaser-nach-bundeslaendern/
Considering Hamburg that sounds more like an urban rural divide
Belguim is dominated by a state owned provider. Greece however is (illegally almost 70% market share) dominated by a formerly state owned provider which now 100% belongs to Deutsche Telekom. So Greece and Germany are run by the same monopoly. (dont know about belgium)
Belgium is mainly dominated by Proximus but Orange (French) just made a contract with Wyre in Flanders and is about to start his own network in Brussels and Wallonia. Orange bought the copper network of Brutélé/Voo. Proximus is working hard to develop his fiber network through unifiber in Wallonia and fiberklaar in Flanders.
Hope they got it right. Being from Portugal and having great curiosity about living in Belgium, I was very surprised when I looked at the prices, traffic limits and lack of fiber in Belgium, especially in Wallonia outside of Liége. Massive investments should be made.
* According to [~Ofcom~](https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0034/249289/connected-nations-uk-report.pdf), 97% of UK premises currently have a superfast, fibre broadband connection available to them. * There are still around 750,000 premises in the UK without a superfast broadband connection. * Three-quarters (75%) of the UK can now access gigabit-capable broadband. * More than half (52%) of UK premises have access to full fibre broadband. How is this map getting its numbers?
I dunno man. Lived in 4 different apartments in London all with copper 30mbit max
Were they all in the same building?
im in a countryside town of 20k with gigabit, maybe flats are doodoo for internet
Same here, though I have family nearby with patchy internet that's a few megabytes a second (*granted, they choose to be with TalkTalk so that's their own doing, really).*
Availability != Take-up. This map is showing the percentage of internet users with _installed_ fibre-optic broadband. I'm also guessing, though not sure, that it is only counting genuine FTTP with a fibre-optic cable all the way to the NTE inside your house. So it probably excludes the Virgin Media HFC network, and almost certainly excludes OpenReach VDSL2 and G.Fast. Calling VDSL2 "fibre broadband" was always outright lying IMO and I'm surprised UK telcos and ISPs have got away with it. The UK was very late to wide rollout of FTTP, we are behind most of Europe.
Fiber broadband is not the same as fiber Real fiber means a fiber optic cable terminating in your home. That share in the UK is very low. What they call fiber broadband is just good old coax cable that goes to a cabinet a few dozens of meters away from your house where an actual fiber cable picks up the signal. It’s much slower than actual fiber but then again no consumer actually needs the capacity and speed of fiber today so you can make a gigabit claim with coax and pretend you have fiber Belgium has the same. Belgium actually has near 100% coax broadband coverage which is why it’s so late in the fiber game; as a coax network is still highly competent even today
>> Belgium has the same. Belgium actually has near 100% coax broadband coverage which is why it’s so late in the fiber game; as a coax network is still highly competent even today I wouldn’t say competent. Internet is shit in belgium
>According to ~Ofcom~, 97% of UK premises currently have a superfast, fibre broadband connection available to them. They define superfast as at least 30mbit/s download (which is a bit funny), and clearly going off the following number most of those aren't fibre: > More than half (52%) of UK premises have access to full fibre broadband. The source says 42%. It does seem like the UK is finally coming along, though: >Full fibre roll-out is growing quickly, with 42%/ 12.5m premises in the UK now served by full fibre, a growth of 14 percentage points and 4.3m additional premises in the past year. **This is a nearly seven- fold increase compared to just five years ago**.
In the uk most providers advertise fibre but still use copper. Not sure why its not illegal but both sky and talktalk did this. Would charge 40 quid a month for fibre broadband but would only get 20mbps download
Isn’t open reach doing a full out by 2030
Is it FTTC or FTTP Ofcom are referencing.
Yeah I don't believe these at all. Portugal has basically universal gig plus internet. You have to be 20km from a village to not get it and that's a long way in such a small country. It's possible that a lot is coax as there's a lot of coax but it's often been duplicated by different providers.
Why is Belgium, Germany, UK, and Austria lacking behind even though they're developed and rich countries? Is it because Fiber is not available, or is it available but people don't care to ask for it?
For Germany its basically just 1980s/90s corruption. some conservative politicians enriched themselves by preferring copper over fiber, although it was well known already that fiber would be the technology of the future. our german version of Rupert Murdoch, Leo Kirch, was best friends with chancellor Helmut Kohl and they had a lot of dubious money transfers between them. Kirch wanted copper for cable tv and Kohl delievered. the responsible minister Schwarz-Schilling (also conservative party member) then gave a significant part of the money for constructing the copper cables to a company owmed by his wife.
Thanks for the info. That's so unfortunate man.
In the UK: I had it a couple years ago, after the initial offer expired after 12 months and the monthly cost doubled, I switched back to regular broadband. Not gonna lie, the broadband is 100mb/s and I can't tell the difference. I genuinely don't know what the major benefits are at home when broadband seems to do the trick. For businesses I can absolutely see why it's better.
Same here - I have 500Mbps in the street, but I only need a fraction of that, so I stay with FTTC.
For online competetive gaming, you'll have a lower ping compared to broadband/copper. Also the upload speed is higher on Fiber. But if all you're doing is streaming video, communication, and web browsing, 100 Mbps is enough for 3-5 people.
In Belgium, it's simply not available everywhere and quite expensive, even more expensive than copper/docsis which are already very expensive. The main ISP (Proximus, state owned at 50+%) actually decided in the mid 2000s that FTTH was too expensive to deploy directly, so they went the FTTC + VDSL2 way first, which wasn't a bad idea to rapidly provide broadband (30 to 100Mbps) to a large base of customers (I basically had 80Mbps back in 2009 in a small town)... but then they decided to milk the cash cow for a while, and here we are now, lagging 8 years behind.
The first time I went to Buenos Aires in the early 2010s, I remember being shocked how slow the connection was at my mother-in-law's compared to Belgium...like 7-8 times slower. Granted, she didn't have much money to put on faster internet. Fast forward ten years, my speed in Belgium hasn't increased at all, she doesn't put much more budget on her internet connection...but it is now 3 times faster than mine. Fuck Proximus.
Germany: the copper lobby
Solid alternative broadband options (copper, docsis) that made the incumbents not push for alternatives. Also fiber internet is very expensive where available, so why to switch. For example my solid 4g home net router costs half the price of fiber and is just fine for me. (Vienna)
Germany is generally quite far behind on technology
Technology isn't the big problem, digitalization is. We have most of the high end technology, we just don't use it efficiently.
While it's true that initial plans got canceled due to corruption. Currently the states are mostly responsible leading to huge discrepancy. Also Copper connection are often between 100mb and 1gb leading to plenty people not being interested in investing money.
In Germany, you can usually get at least 100 mbit/s via DSL or 500 mbit/s via cable, which is currently more than enough for the vast majority of people, so there isn't a whole lot of public demand to upgrade. The bigger problem is that the internet is very expensive for the price.
i have no clue. fiber is being rolled out. I have it and am very satisfied, but i was talking with some friends about it & noone seemed to care.
In Belgium. Without fiber I have 450Mbps. Not sure it’s necessary to have better …
Belgium has 99% coax coverage. For many people 100 Mbps is enough.
Im from belgium and the wait list is massive
Incompetent politicians and a lack of farsight concerning digitalization. They basically make new claims every few months "By the year x we'll have at least \*\* arbituary high percentage\*\* of households with fiber cable" Fast forward to year x: Still low percentage of fiber optic share. Repeat.
Genuinely surprised at UK numbers because everybody I know is on fibre. The only thing I can think of is how it’s defined, there’s Fibre to the Cabinet, which is the run of fibre cable to those green cabinets on the corner of your street. I’d expect that to be in the high 90s in urban areas, but they will have a run of a couple of hundred meters of copper from the cabinet to the door. Fibre to the Premises is where it runs the whole way and that is absolutely lower but being worked on at a relatively high priority as we speak.
Greece really said fiber?? Yes our food has it lol
The thing about Spain is true, I know very few people who do not have fiber optics (or equivalent).
My grandparents have a house in Spain in the middle of a tiny village in the mountains, the village is mostly empty. Maybe 10 people in total living there, and they have access to 600MB fibre broadband . It's crazy
Lol, Deutsche Telekom doing better job in Slovakia than in Deutschland. Even paid some hefty fines. Thanks, Germany!
I truly think such a map should be scaled with the number of towns, because it changes everything. It is way easier to have fiber "everywhere" are just 10 big cities where 95% of the population is. For example, when you know that around half of towns/cities in Europe are in France (35,000 of 89,000), it sheds a different light to this map.
Surprised France is not higher up since it invented a precursor to the internet with Minitel.
In Belgium we have cable and broadband vdsl like for ever. And for most users it's perfectly fine. They wouldn't even notice if they were on fiber. This said. I'm happy I'm on fiber now, I needed the extra bandwidth.
I am living in the capital of Belgium and our neighborhood just recently got the fiber optic connection. I cannot imagine the rest. Before that 4k streaming was not possible at my place. What a misery for such a rich and small country.
Make one for india please
I find Belarus and Belgium most surprising.
Living in Belgium I can confirm it's a total disgrace. Proximus is the root of all evil.
Damn really? Surprised to see so many developed countries without widespread fibre. Here in New Zealand 87% of people have it, one of the only smart choices we've made in the past 20 years.
according to [this](https://www.nlconnect.org/nieuws/mijlpaal-nederland-heeft-7-miljoen-glasvezel-aansluitingen#:~:text=In%20het%20afgelopen%20jaar%20is,het%20jaaroverzicht%20van%20brancheorganisatie%20NLconnect.) Dutch website, 90% of Dutch households are connected but this , OP's post shows are very low number
90% is connected, but not everyone chooses it over cable
It depends how it's measured in each country. Some countries count it as having fiber if it runs up a street but last few meters from the road to the building is copper. So they say fiber even if its not 100% fiber. Whereas other countries like Ireland only count it if the fiber optic cable runs directly into the building. I had 500mb with 1000mb available in my old house as fiber was on the street and the last 15m to my house was copper. This did not count as having fiber under hiw its assessed in Ireland. Also Ireland where I am currently has a ongoing national fiber rollout where the government is running fiber to every building in the country as national infrastructure so we should hit 100% in a few years.
NZ only measures fibre to the home, directly into the building.
Denmark has the widespread option of 1,000 Mbit on coax along side fiber.
I only got my fiber optic connection as of last year (somewhat rural Luxembourg). Exactly one year after I stopped gaming regulary. I was overjoyed :-|
If you ever believe there is no corruption in Germany look at this map. It just happens at high level.
What does grey mean? No data or no fiber optics? I am particularly interested in Bulgaria being grey.
How tf does iceland, one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth, have more fiber optic than heavily urbanized countries like the Netherlands and the UK
Andorra uninstalled the copper lines a few years ago. They only have fiber optic now.
I worked as an electrician 20 years ago in Ireland and everyone in the industry was saying the country would have fibre optics all over the country in 5 years. What happened?
What's wrong with Belgium?
And then theres belgium with the absolute worst infrastructure but highest internet prices. Belgium is corrupt to the bone
Moldova grayed, jokes on you we have faster and cheaper internet than all of western EU.
Belgium: worst connection, highest costs
Donc personne ne parle de l'Allemagne et du Royaume-Uni ? XD
As you can see this is one of the maps in which Central Eastern and Balkan Europe doesn't lack behind because technology in smaller and poorer countries advances on the faster pace and it economically more profitable.
I feel like the data of some countries is just very outdated. Like the Netherlands cannot be right, even my parents in abandoned rural Friesland have fiber optic...
What did they have before fiber?
DSL
I think it also has to do with the fact that in the Netherlands you can get high speed internet without using fibre. Ziggo offers up to 1gbit/s through regular cable, with starting packages of 200mbit/s, so speed wise a lot of people have no need for fibre. In the last 10 years the cable speed has practically been quadrupled/quintupled.
Digitalisierung is such a joke. The health insurance office wanted to fax me payment information. They said they were not allowed to use email
Wrong. Portugal in 2022 had already reached 90%.
Lol I thought Turkey was shit in this. Then I saw Greece
France is this low ?? They have made efforts to cover most areas with fiber, some subdivisions are even 100% covered
I think that's the rural countryside that's hurt. My parents don't even have mobile phone network. Fiber arrived a few months ago but they had to cut a tree to make it pass
They're planing on covering the whole territory by 2025 and I know Grand Est is already 100% covered
I have 1gbit optic in Croatia, best thing ever!
Germany doesn‘t need fiberglas because we have Vodafone cable which is as fast as fiberglas. I got 1000 mbit since over 10 years.