The country remains on track to fulfil its broadband strategy by 2025 – but it should not ignore recent signs of reduced private investment
A country that leads the pack in Europe: The Swedish regulator, the PTS, published today its annual report on broadband and mobile coverage for 2020. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the report does paint a relatively rosy picture of the state of broadband coverage in a country that has always been at the forefront of fibre deployment in Europe. After all, it finds that 95% of households and businesses had access to, or the opportunity to connect, to gigabit-capable broadband – a figure that many other European countries can only dream of, considering the EU average for coverage of very-high capacity networks stood at 45% according to the EC’s latest DESI index.
But the target for 2020 has been missed: The report goes on to find that the gap between rural and urban areas remains significant, although is improving. Only 68% of households outside densely populated areas had access to gigabit-capable broadband, but this is an increase by nine percentage points compared to 2019. However, it’s not all good news. In 2016, Sweden adopted a broadband strategy for 2025 which envisaged that 95% would have had access to 100Mbps connections by 2020. This has not been achieved, considering that the figure for 2020 stood at 86%. It is an increase by two percentage points compared to 2019, although it means the growth rate was slower than the previous years.
Public funding will be crucial in the next five years: The PTS attributes the slowdown to reduced private investment, and to the focus on increasingly sparsely populated areas. Public investment will now play a crucial role in closing the gap, in a country where some areas will always be hard to reach. The 2025 target expects 98% of households to have full access to gigabit-broadband. The Government has allocated SEK2.85bn (£240.7m) for the years 2020 to 2025. This may look like a small figure compared to the £5bn pledged by the UK government for rural areas – but it could be enough for a country that has already done the heavy lifting and only needs to finish the job.
Source: https://pts.se/sv/nyheter/pressmeddelanden/2021/allt-fler-kan-ansluta-sig-till-snabba-bredbandsnat/
