Malta is performing above the EU average in terms of penetration and growth rate of fast broadband internet access but well below in terms of speed and mobile broadband access, according to the latest report published by the European Commission.
Although at an EU level there has been improvement in terms of broadband internet access, the Commission warns “there is still a long way to go before the EU reaches its targets of giving every European access to basic broadband by 2013 and fast and ultra fast broadband by 2020 as outlined in the Digital Agenda for Europe.”
Broadband take up continues to grow in the EU with 25.6 subscriptions for every 100 citizens (23.9 one year earlier). Malta scored above average, with 28.5 per cent and also scored well in terms of rate growth, being positioned first in 2010 and fourth in 2009. Indeed the number of broadband internet subscriptions almost tripled from 41,551 in 2005 to 117,500 last July.
Annual growth in mobile broadband is remarkable at 45 per cent, with six mobile broadband dedicated access devices (USB-keys or dongles) per 100 citizens. Malta’s score in this category is low, with just 13.4 per cent in terms of penetration compared to the EU average of 21.3 per cent. This can be explained by the strong penetration of fixed broadband access and the simple fact that Malta is so small that you are never far away from home or the office.
Ten EU countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Sweden and UK) have levels of broadband take up above the United States (US levels are 26.4 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, according to OECD May 2010 statistics).
Greece and the Czech Republic made the best progress in the last year (measured by per capita growth). Growth rates are slowing as their markets mature and approach saturation (in leading member states, such as Finland and Sweden, fixed broadband take-up rates are actually falling probably due to fixed-to-mobile broadband substitution.)
Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) remains the most common technology to access broadband in Europe with 100 million lines, but its market share is declining in favour of higher-speed fibre architectures and cable with Docsis 3.0 (an upgrade of cable networks allowing very-high speed internet). In Malta the market is shared roughly between DSL and cable.
Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) grew by 40 per cent between July 2009 and July 2010, but currently only represents 1.7 per cent of the total lines in Europe as it is present only in a handful of countries (notably Sweden, where 24 per cent of broadband lines are FTTH). There are no FTTH installations in Malta yet, though the large Maltese communication services providers have most of their networks based on fibre lines.
Broadband connections in Europe are much faster than one year ago. In July 2010, 29 per cent of EU broadband lines had speeds of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps) (up from 15 per cent one year earlier). Malta did not score well in this respect, with just 10.2 per cent, as 89 per cent of all subscriptions in Malta are between 2 and 10 Mbps.
Greater data transmission speeds generally provide customers with more and better choice of services at a lower price per megabit. Five per cent of lines in the EU have average speeds at or above 30 Mbps (only 0.5 per cent at or above 100 Mbps).
The Commission said new entertainment and business services, such as high definition television or video conferencing facilities, need much faster internet access than generally available in Europe today to match world leaders like South Korea and Japan. The Digital Agenda 2020 targets are at least 30 Mbps available for all and half of European households subscribing to speeds above 100 Mbps.
Such speeds are already available in Malta but the take-up is very low.
Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, said: “Fast broadband is digital oxygen, essential for Europe’s prosperity and well-being. Take up and available speeds are improving, but we need to do more to reach our very fast broadband targets. In particular, we need urgent agreement on our proposal to ensure radio spectrum is available for mobile broadband, for which demand is growing very fast.”
This report comes just a few weeks after two reports, one sponsored by Cisco and the Communications Market Review for January-June 2010 published by the Malta Communications Authority, shed more light on the availability and quality of internet access in Malta.
These three reports between them confirm that the penetration of broadband internet access in Malta is high and this has killed the slower dial-up access (known as narrowband); the market is dominated by just two players, one offering DSL and the other cable internet access; the quality is relatively good; but speeds are low and this is not enough to support the next-generation of internet-based applications.