4G LTE mobile broadband coverage rose 20 percent to nearly 8 in 10 or 79.4 percent in European Union households in 2014, said IHS.

On the other hand, Next Generation Access (NGA) broadband coverage reached 68.1 percent of EU homes, making broadband services with at least 30 Mbps speed available to 15.5 million households more than in 2013.

Fixed broadband coverage growth was flat at 97 percent.

Rural fixed broadband coverage in EU was flat at 89.6 percent. NGA technologies in rural areas increased to 25.1 percent of rural homes in 2014 against 18.1 percent in 2013.

LTE has reached 99 percent of households in Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden.

“Other countries with outstanding performance in LTE coverage also include the Czech Republic and Malta, which saw an increase in coverage from 12 percent to 91.9 percent and from no coverage to 67 percent, respectively,” said Alzbeta Fellenbaum, senior analyst at IHS Technology.

The growth in overall NGA coverage can be primarily attributed to an increase in very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) coverage, which grew by over seven percentage points in the year, reaching 37.6 percent of EU households by the end of 2014.
Significant increases were recorded in Denmark, Austria, and Iceland, all reporting increases in VDSL coverage exceeding 30 percentage points.

Fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) coverage increased, with services available to 18.7 percent of European households. In 2014 Lithuania and Latvia remained the two countries with the highest FTTP coverage, with homes passed by FTTP reaching nearly 95 percent of households in Lithuania and 83.2 percent of households in Latvia.

FTTP coverage increased 16.1 percent in Portugal and 22.1 percent in Spain, reaching 65.8 percent of Portuguese and 44.8 percent of Spanish homes.

Baburajan K
[email protected]