Broadband growth high
Broadband lines in Greece have been rapidly growing but the country still remains last in the EU in terms of broadband penetration, according to the Broadband Scorecard announced yesterday by the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA). The measurement by ECTA, carried out in the period between October 2006 and March 2007, showed that Greece ranked last among its other 26 European Union partners, with broadband penetration at 5.6 percent against an average of 18.1 percent in the former EU25. The scorecard data does not include Bulgaria and Romania, but includes Turkey, which ranked lower than Greece. In the six-month period under review, the number of broadband lines rose dramatically from 369,000 to 623,000, or 69 percent. In the EU, the average increase stood at 15.8 percent, from 72 million to 83 million, with only Cyprus, Poland and Slovakia recording high double-digit growth similar to that of Greece. According to the ECTA announcement, broadband penetration in the EU has reached an all-time high and has now drawn even with the US and Japan. The success in many of the high-ranking countries in Europe can be attributed partly to local loop unbundling, the process whereby competitors rent the last mile from the national telecoms incumbent and offer their own broadband services to consumers. Eight EU countries, the announcement added, now have broadband penetration levels above 20 percent, with The Netherlands having the highest penetration at 33 percent, followed by Denmark, Finland and Sweden. For the first time, average penetration in the EU15 countries is at 19.9 percent, comparable with the USA’s 19.6 percent and Japan’s 20.2 percent. ECTA, a pro-competition body, puts pressure on the European Commission toward achieving functional separation, a process whereby the incumbent creates a separate unit for its bottleneck assets, including unbundled loops, and helps ensure that essential pro-competitive rules are adhered to. Functional separation has been successfully introduced in the UK.
