Mobile Internet in Europe

Almost one quarter of Europeans used mobile phones to access Internet in 2012

EUROSTAT, the EU's statistical service, has recently published some interesting statistics on mobile Internet use in Europe (EUROSTAT. 2012. Devices used for mobile connection to the Internet. isoc_cimobi_dev).

The five statistics look at two aspects of mobility and the Internet. First, the level of Internet connectivity of mobile devices: laptop, notebook, netbook and tablet computers and handheld devices (Internet-enabled mobile phones). Second, whether a mobile network is used to connect these devices to the Internet.

Click to enlarge

In terms of using handheld devices to connect to the Internet, Nordic countries are ranked among the top five with Luxembourg at third. There is a huge gap in penetration ranging from 3 in 5 Swedes using handheld devices to access the Internet to just six percent of Romanians. It is surprising that poorer EU members such as Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest rates of handset Internet access given that fixed line broadband penetration is relatively low in those countries. One inhibiting factor might be the higher relative cost of smartphones.

Another interesting factor is the relatively high use of non-mobile cellular networks to access the Internet from handheld devices. Although it is not explicitly mentioned, it seems pretty likely that if a cellular network is not used to access the Internet from a handheld device, then Wi-Fi is being used. Around a fifth of Europeans use Wi-Fi and not mobile cellular networks to access the Internet on their mobile phones. Wi-Fi access accounts for almost half of handset Internet access in several countries and the majority of access in Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Italy. In a future post, mobile broadband prices will be examined as a possible factor for prefering Wi-Fi over cellular networks for handset Internet access.

Individuals using handheld device to access Internet by type of Internet access, 2012

ictDATA.org adapted from Eurostat (Click to enlarge)

It is interesting to contrast the survey data with administrative data on mobile broadband subscriptions.  The European Commission publishes broadband subscription data (http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/cocom_broadband_july_2011.pdf). At the time of writing the latest available data was from July 2011.  Even though the subscription data are from a year earlier, the number of subscriptions is almost twice as much as the number of people who say they use the Internet from mobile devices over mobile networks. Either users may have more than one subscription or users have a mobile broadband subscription but do not access the Internet or the subscription data are overstated. Another possibility might be age; the survey data are based on ages 16-74 so they exclude younger teens. But even including those aged 10-14 and assuming they use the Internet from mobile devices at the same rate would only add another seven million people. In any case, there is a recurrent problem with mobile broadband subscriptions not reflecting survey data on actual Internet use from mobile phones.

Internet access from mobile devices and mobile broadband subscriptions, European Union

	Individuals using the mobile phone network to connect mobile devices, 2012							Mobile broadband subscriptions, July 2011
	Handheld device		Portable computer		All mobile devices			Handheld device		Dedicated data service cards/modems/keys		All active users
	%	000s	%	000s	%	000s		%	000s	%	000s	%	000s
European Union	19	63,818	9	30,230	28	94,048		34.6	136,241	7.5	37,800	34.6	174,042
Austria	32	1,821	21	1,195	53	3,015		13.1	1,105	19.8	1,667	33.0	2,772
Belgium	16	1,160	7	508	23	1,668		13.4	1,463	2.6	281	16.0	1,744
Bulgaria	4	201	4	201	8	403		9.8	734	3.0	224	12.8	957
Cyprus	6	36	2	12	8	47		37.6	302	3.1	25	40.6	327
Czech Rep.	3	220	4	293	7	513		43.1	4,536	4.9	514	47.9	5,050
Denmark	39	1,416	3	109	42	1,525		57.4	3,190	15.2	846	72.6	4,036
Estonia	12	109	14	127	26	236		28.8	385	8.2	110	36.9	495
Finland	40	1,419	25	887	65	2,305		44.6	2,397	34.0	1,825	78.6	4,223
France	30	12,628	7	2,947	37	15,575		24.8	16,120	4.4	2,880	29.2	19,000
Germany	20	10,793	13	7,016	33	17,809		23.1	18,900	6.0	4,900	29.1	23,800
Greece	9	675	4	300	13	976		24.2	2,746	2.8	322	27.1	3,068
Hungary	9	617	7	480	16	1,097		4.0	402	5.4	541	9.4	943
Ireland	17	522	8	246	25	768		39.3	1,761	13.0	584	52.3	2,344
Italy	5	1,991	6	2,389	11	4,379		19.0	11,502	9.6	5,803	28.5	17,305
Latvia	14	196	9	126	23	322		23.6	527	2.6	59	26.3	586
Lithuania	12	246	5	103	17	349		9.8	318	6.8	221	16.6	539
Luxembourg	35	123	17	60	52	182		42.8	219	5.6	29	48.4	248
Malta	16	46	11	32	27	78		8.7	36	3.2	13	11.9	50
Netherlands	39	4,350	5	558	44	4,908		34.7	5,783	4.6	768	39.3	6,551
Poland	11	3,023	8	2,199	19	5,222		32.2	12,291	8.2	3,118	40.3	15,409
Portugal	10	698	10	698	20	1,396		25.4	2,702	11.1	1,181	36.5	3,883
Romania	4	600	4	600	8	1,199		6.7	1,437	4.8	1,032	11.5	2,469
Slovakia	14	544	11	427	25	971		20.8	1,130	7.1	386	27.9	1,516
Slovenia	17	241	5	71	22	312		25.9	531	2.6	53	28.5	584
Spain	25	7,828	10	3,131	35	10,959		33.6	15,495	7.6	3,503	41.2	18,998
Sweden	56	3,423	34	2,079	90	5,502		72.7	6,846	20.2	1,906	92.9	8,752
United Kingdom†	37	15,236	31	12,889	68	28,124		37.5	23,384	8.0	5,010	45.5	28,394

Note:  Survey data are for ages 16-74; however estimates of the number of individuals are based on ages 15-64. Both data sets adapted from Eurostat. † National data, 2011; refers to all Internet access and not just from mobile phone network. Note that as a result of the UK data using a different methodology the survey data totals for the European Union are based on the aggregate EU usage figure (provided by Eurostat) and not the sum of the individual country data.
Source: Adapted by ICTData.org

Updated 23 January 2013.