1.1 People & businesses online
People
4 out of 10 EU households use mobile broadband
In 2016, 85 % of households in the EU had access to the internet, compared with 70 % in 2010. This share was slightly higher for households in urban areas (88 %) than in rural areas (80 %).
Among the 15 % of households without internet access, the two main reasons for not having access were that the internet was not considered to be useful (47 %) and that the people concerned lacked the necessary skills (42 %).
In 2016, most households (83 %) had a broadband internet connection. The share of households with fixed broadband rose from 57 % in 2010 to 74 % in 2016. During the same period, the percentage of households with a mobile broadband connection via a mobile phone network quadrupled from 10 % to 41 %.
8 out of 10 EU internet users go online with a mobile phone
For many people in the EU, using the internet has become a common activity: 82 % were internet users, meaning they had been online at least once during the last 3 months prior to the 2016 survey.
This share was slightly higher for people living in urban areas (86 %) than for those in rural areas (75 %). However, there were still some people who had never used the internet, but their share steadily declined from 27 % in 2010 to 14 % in 2016.
Most internet users said that they accessed the internet regularly during these 3 months: 87 % of them were online every day and a further 10 % at least once per week, but not daily. The highest shares of daily internet users were found in Italy (96 %) and Luxembourg (95 %).
Nowadays, internet users have many options as to how they can go online and they often use more than one device to do so. In 2016, mobile/smart phones were the most frequently used device as reported by 79 % of internet users in the EU, 64 % said they used a laptop/netbook, 54 % a desktop computer and 44 % a tablet.
Among the EU Member States, the highest shares of users accessing the internet via a mobile/smart phone were found in Spain (93 %), Cyprus and the Netherlands (both 88 %).
In 2016, mobile/smart phones were used by almost all younger internet users aged 16 to 24 years (94 %) in the EU to surf the internet. This was also the case among those aged 25 to 34 years (91 %), while it was just 48 % of older users aged 65 to 74 years.
Businesses
7 out of 10 EU businesses use mobile broadband
Nowadays, for many businesses having internet access is indispensable for their daily activities. This is reflected in the fact that just 3 % of businesses in the EU did not have an internet connection at the beginning of 2016, with the highest shares found in Romania (16 %) and Greece (12 %).
Among those EU businesses with internet access, the vast majority (95 %) used fixed broadband to go online. However, mobile broadband connections are becoming more common: in 2016, this type of access was used by 69 % of businesses, compared with just 28 % in 2010.
Among large businesses, 94 % used a mobile broadband connection in 2016, compared with 69 % of small and medium sized businesses (SMEs).
Among the EU Member States, the use of mobile broadband connections was highest for businesses in Finland (94 %), Denmark and Croatia (both 88 %).
During recent years, the speed of internet connections has increased considerably and faster connections have become widely available. Between 2011 and 2016, the share of businesses in the EU which had a connection speed of at least 100 Mbit/s more than doubled from 6 % to 13 %.
7 out of 10 EU businesses provide portable devices to staff
In 2016, half of all employees in the EU used a computer with access to the internet. This share was slightly higher for large businesses (53 %) than for SMEs (47 %).
69 % of businesses provided their employees with a portable device with a mobile internet connection. This was the case for almost all businesses in the Nordic Member States: Finland (94 %), Denmark (92 %) and Sweden (85 %), while it was less common in Bulgaria (41 %) and Romania (43 %).
Taking a more detailed look at the reasons why businesses provide their staff with such a portable device, it appears that accessing work e-mails was the main purpose, as reported by 86 % of EU businesses in 2016, while other reasons included working on business' documents (50 %) or using business software applications (44 %).
