Digital Accessibility in the EU: territorial patterns and trends of broadband network access and performance, 2019-2024

Access to broadband networks is increasingly an essential enabler to drive the economic and social development of territories, improving access to essential services such as education and contributing to the number of workplaces. The improvement of digital connectivity and Internet network performance is a long-standing policy priority for the European Commission to strengthen regional development and resilience and overcome spatial disparities in access to opportunities across different European regions. In this sense, mapping and understanding the spatial patterns of broadband network access and performance across regions in the EU27 is critical to adequately address the possible disparities and needs of different places and territories. Results presented in this report show that, over the last years, there has been a generalised improvement in broadband performance across all EU Member States, both for the fixed and mobile broadband networks. Whereas performance differences between cities and rural areas are still significant, contributing to a well-known ‘digital divide’, results also illustrate how, for several countries, the best performance improvements in network performance occurred in rural areas in recent years. These findings represent a promising signal for the current efforts to bridge the digital gap across territories in many European countries, envisioned by the Commission and sustained through dedicating policies.