Fibre took over fixed broadband networks
In autumn 2018, the share of fibre in all fixed broadband subscriptions increased to above 50%. At the same time, the total number of broadband subscriptions exceeded the previous years.
There were 1,737,000 fixed broadband subscriptions in Finland at end of 2018. Last time the number of subscriptions was at this level at the end of 2014. The number of household subscriptions, in particular, has been on the rise for years, and at the end of 2018, it exceeded 1.5 million for the first time. In contrast, the number of business subscriptions continued to decrease and dropped under 210,000 subscriptions.
At the end of 2018, more than half of all fixed broadband subscriptions were fibre subscriptions, which is 5 percentage points more than the year before. Here, fibre includes connections in which fibre reaches a building distributor (Fibre to the Building, FTTB) and connections in which fibre reaches a home or office (Fibre to the Home, FTTH). These connections usually provide access to at least 100 Mbps broadband depending on the condition of the property’s internal network. The number of fibre subscriptions is growing at the expense of copper-based subscriptions, in particular, as copper is replaced by fibre.
By the end of 2018, only 7% of all fixed broadband subscriptions had a download speed of less than 10 Mbps. The share of very fast subscriptions (download speed of at least 100Mbps) is growing steadily and reached 36% at the end of the year. Upload speeds that are vital to, for example, video conferences and cloud services, grow slower than download speeds. At the end of 2018, 92% of fixed broadband subscriptions had an upload speed of less than 100 Mbps, which is almost the same as in 2017.
At the end of 2018, the number of cable TV subscriptions was nearly 1.7 million showing an increase of 3% compared to the previous year. The number of IPTV subscriptions based on broadband connections had grown by 4% during that time, but at 460,000 it is still almost four times smaller than the number of cable TV subscriptions.
At the end of 2018, there were 320,000 fixed telephone subscriptions. 63% of these subscriptions were used by businesses. Fixed telephone subscriptions in households had decreased by 20% to 120,000 subscriptions in one year.
This information is based on data reported by telecommunications operators to Traficom every six months.
Data on subscription volumes and use:
Inquiries
Marja Heinonen, Communications Market Specialist, tel. +358 295 390 306
Joonas Orkola, Development Manager, tel. +358 295 390 493, Twitter: @JoonasOrkola
Email addresses are of the format firstname.lastname(at)traficom.fi.