National coverage by broadband technology
Fixed broadband coverage at the national level in Sweden remained above the EU average, with 97.7% of homes passed by at least one fixed broadband network at the end of June 2020. However, with just 81.3% of rural households having access to fixed broadband services, Sweden remained below the EU average of 89.7%. The country exceeded the EU average for availability of NGA broadband at the national level, with 87.5% of homes passed, while remaining below the EU average at rural level, with 48.4% of rural homes passed, despite a 7.4 percentage point increase in rural NGA availability.
Overall FTTP & DOCSIS 3.1 technologies were available to 80.5% of Swedish households, which is still significantly above the rising EU average of 59.8%.
Meanwhile DSL remained the most prevalent individual fixed broadband technology in Sweden, covering 88.9% of households nationally. As the incumbent Telia continued with its deployment of fibre and gradual closing of copper networks, DSL decreased slightly year-on-year (by 0.4 percentage point), although VDSL rose marginally (0.2 percentage point). By the end of June 2020, 21.0% of Swedish households had access to VDSL broadband services compared to 20.8% in mid-2019. As in previous years, there were no VDSL2 Vectoring deployments reported in Sweden.
By far the leading NGA technology is FTTP, with networks passing 80.5% of homes and coverage increasing by 3.4 percentage points since mid-2019. Cable modem DOCSIS 3.0 stood at 37.3% of homes passed at the end of June 2020. Meanwhile, although DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades have launched in Sweden, the technology’s reach remains extremely limited, with only 0.3% of homes having access to the new standard.
With Sweden having achieved universal LTE coverage in mid-2017, mobile broadband coverage of Sweden did not change over the study period. The landscape is evolving due to the introduction of 5G, which had reached 13.6% of homes nationally at the end of June 2020, with both Telia and Tele2 having launched commercial services in May 2020.
Looking at broadband availability in rural Sweden, DSL remained the most prevalent access technology, with 62.4% of households covered. As was the case nationally, DSL coverage recorded a slight decrease since mid-2019, losing 1.5 percentage points.
FTTP remained the most prevalent NGA broadband technology for rural households, passing 48.1% of homes passed, and recording an increase in coverage of 7.5 percentage points since mid-2019. Rural VDSL and cable modem DOCSIS 3.0 coverage remained negligible, with both remaining below 1.0% of coverage, at 0.7% and 0.3% respectively.
As was the case on a national level, LTE coverage remained universal across rural Sweden.
Regional coverage by broadband technology
At the end of June 2020, overall fixed broadband coverage in almost all Swedish regions exceeded 95%, except for Jämtlands län and Norrbottens län which recorded household coverage of 91.1% and 94.2% respectively. The capital region of Stockholm recorded the highest fixed broadband coverage level, with 99.6% of homes passed.
As with most of the countries studied, NGA technologies coverage recorded a higher level of variance across regions than fixed broadband – although the range is narrower than in the previous iteration. NGA broadband availability varied between 75.9% in Jämtlands län (up by 3.3 percentage points since mid-2019) and almost 95% in the capital region of Stockholm.
Data tables for Sweden
Note: The 2020 figures represent the state of broadband coverage at the end of June 2020. The 2019 (end of June) and 2018 (end of June) figures are drawn from the previous studies conducted by IHS Markit, Omdia, and Point Topic.
All restatements are highlighted in italics.
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