News
Japan overtakes Finland for first place in OECD’s mobile broadband ranking, while Switzerland leads in fixed.
Mobile broadband penetration across OECD countries reached 90.3% at the end of 2015, according to new statistics published by the inter-governmental body on Tuesday.
There were 1.15 billion mobile broadband subscriptions in the 35 member countries at year-end, which together have a population of 1.27 billion. That represents an increase of 117 million subs on the previous year, when penetration stood at 81.6%.
Japan leads the way in the OECD’s ranking, having overtaken Finland for top spot. It had 176 million subscriptions, giving it a penetration rate of 138.8%, compared to Finland’s 7.4 million subs and 135.4% penetration.
The third ranked country on the list, Sweden, is some way behind with mobile broadband penetration of 120.8%, while nine countries in total have rates of above 100%, the other six being the U.S., Denmark, Australia, Estonia, New Zealand and South Korea, in that order.
A further five – Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, Iceland and the U.K. – come in on or above the OECD average.
The OECD also disclosed that fixed broadband subscriptions reached 371 million at the end of December, up from 356 million at end-2014, giving a penetration rate of 29%.
45.6% of the connections were via DSL, 19.4% were fibre – up from 16.2% 12 months earlier – and 32% were cable.
Switzerland tops the fixed broadband chart with 51.9% penetration, followed by Denmark with 42.4% and the Netherlands with 41.3%.
