Greece is a laggard in IT and communications
The Greek information technology and communications market is showing two clear trends, according to the European Commission’s Special Eurobarometer: The recession has led Greeks to slash spending on electronic communications, including cell phones, and the country is stuck in a rut of obsolete technologies.
Regarding the cuts in expenditure, the Eurobarometer report confirms the major drop in revenues that Greek telecom firms have pointed to, particularly in the mobile phone industry: Last year the share of households using both landlines and cell phones fell by five percentage points, to 72 percent from 77 percent in 2014.
Greeks terminated more mobile phone connections than landlines last year, but the share of households using landlines exclusively rose from 5 percent in 2014 to 11 percent in 2015. An interesting find was that Greece is the European Union country with the highest daily use of landlines (69 percent) and the lowest use of email (just 12 percent).
Greece ranks 27th among 28 countries in Internet connection via cell phones, ahead of Bulgaria only. Landlines remain the most important connection for Greeks (for 59 percent of the population), against an EU average of just 34 percent. Greece is also last in the use of cloud services, online subscriptions to newspapers, magazines etc, as well as music and/or TV content subscribers etc. This lag is reflected in the financial figures of local telecom enterprises that have suffered in recent years in an environment of fierce competition too.
