Current Situation
The European Commission's 2030 Digital Decade programme aims to ensure that all European households have access to gigabit connectivity by 2030 (source).
While the next generation of conventional fixed broadband infrastructure (FTTP and DOCSIS3.1/4 cable networks) are being rolled out across Europe alongside their 5G mobile counterparts, it is becoming increasingly clear that despite huge investments and everyone’s best efforts, fixed infrastructure alone will not reach every European home by 2030.
Point Topic’s European subsidiary Expert Intelligence have built their own model showing which countries will likely be furthest from reaching 100% gigabit-capable by 2030 through ‘conventional means’ (fixed infrastructure). While countries like Spain, the Netherlands and Malta are leading the pack, others including Germany, Finland and Greece will be a long way off by the end of the decade.
However, even for those countries on track to reach their goals, reaching the most remote households will always be the most expensive and economically difficult. The UK, which should just about manage to reach 100% gigabit-capable, is spending £1.4 billion (source) to encourage network operators to connect 785,000 economically non-viable households through its Project Gigabit programme (the cost will likely rise in the future, as more households are added). Other European countries have similar schemes.
Improved Competitors
But there are new kids on the block. Starlink is now a household name, and subscriber numbers are growing strongly. 5G has also caused the flourishing of a new generation of FWA (Fixed Wireless Access), essentially mobile connectivity for your home. Both are currently able to offer seriously fast speeds with a flexible set-up, with Starlink currently advertising 25 to 220Mbps (link), and FWA mostly advertising top speeds of 250Mbps to 500Mbps. Both suffer from a significant performance drop outside ideal conditions, and both are very unlikely to directly offer gigabit-capable speeds to end-users by 2030. However, this doesn’t mean they are not serious competition for fixed broadband.
In this report, we analyse the competing roles of 5G FWA and satellite broadband, assessing their viability, strengths, challenges, and strategic fit within the Digital Decade objectives.
Growth of FWA and Satellite
Both wireless (FWA) and satellite are growing. Between Q2 2023 and 2024, Point Topic shows 29.6% and 8.2% global growth in subscriber numbers for satellite and wireless, respectively.
However, they are also starting out at very low figures, with wireless and satellite taking up global Q2 2024 market shares of 1.9% and 0.3%, respectively. Furthermore only about 8% of global satellite broadband subscribers are in Europe (the lion’s share is in the Americas), and 24% of FWA subscribers (with 38% in the Americas and 26% in Asia).
Satellite Internet
We have written on satellite internet before, including in our conference paper published last year. While GEO and MEO constellations have been around for a long time, it is really the latest generation of LEO constellations, of which Starlink is currently and for the foreseeable future the only meaningful one, that have made consumer-grade satellite broadband possible. Other programmes, including British/French OneWeb and the EU’s own IRIS2, face delays but may be competitors by 2030.
In the context of the Digital Decade (achieving 100% high-speed connectivity for all), satellite’s biggest advantage is that it can be deployed literally anywhere, without the need for any ground infrastructure. This makes it particularly suitable for areas very unlikely to be covered even by mobile 5G networks.
However, this is really where the strengths end. Apart from high costs, weather dependence, higher latency and lower speeds, another issue is that of network capacity. The end goal of Starlink and other LEO operators is not to provide connectivity to every human on earth. But even with more modest targets, there is a hard limit to how many concurrent connections an individual satellite can support, and a 2021 paper (Osoro, O.B., & Oughton, E.J. (2021, October 13). A Techno-Economic Framework for Satellite Networks Applied to Low Earth Orbit Constellations) does the maths for us:
“[R]esults demonstrate how limited the capacity will be once resources are spread across users in each satellite coverage area. For example, for 0.1 users per km 2 (so 1 user per 10 km 2 ), we estimate a mean per user capacity of 24.94 Mbps, 1.01 Mbps and 10.30 Mbps for Starlink, OneWeb and Kuiper, respectively, in the busiest hour of the day. But if the subscriber density increases to 1 user per km 2 , then the mean per user capacity drops significantly to 2.49 Mbps, 0.10 Mbps and 1.02 Mbps. LEO broadband will be an essential part of the connectivity toolkit, but the results reveal that these mega-constellations will most likely have to operate below 0.1 users per km 2 to provide a service that out-competes other broadband connectivity options.”
While recently there has been some much reported news on a potential 2GB upgrade for Starlink speeds, details have been vague, and user-reported speeds will remain at least an order of magnitude below that for a while (source).
Wireless
While 5G deployment is racing ahead, penetration and utilisation is not as high as expected - i.e. the people with access to 5G are not using it to its limits (expected ‘killer app’ applications like VR and self-driving cars have not yet materialised). This makes it very attractive for operators to push FWA - they can both tap a new market and find users for the available bandwidth.
However, it is unclear whether this will still be the case in 2030. As 5G becomes mature (6G will likely be introduced in the early 2030s), data consumption is likely to be significantly higher and operators may decide to de-prioritise home consumers by introducing stricter speed caps or data consumption limits (which are virtually unheard of for fixed broadband users).
Furthermore, while 5G will likely cover most of the European Union by 2030, 5G is deployed in different frequency bands and there is also a distinction between ‘standalone’ (SA) and ‘non-standalone’ 5G. To put it short, the ‘best’ 5G is also the most expensive to deploy, and has the least coverage in Europe right now.
Source: Digital Decade 2030 Annual Report (2024)
Because 5G is mostly deployed the same way as fibre is - in densely populated, revenue-generating areas first, it may well be the same groups lacking connectivity in 2030 as are lacking fibre. In fact, this is something we can already spot in the data, where in rural areas 5G has an even bigger urban-rural gap than fibre broadband.
Finally, even if an area has access to 5G, performance loss inside buildings (known as ‘BEL’ or Building Entry Loss) can be significant, so that theoretically achievable speeds are rarely possible inside buildings or otherwise obstructed places.
Final Remarks
Fibre rollout is expensive and difficult, and the European Union will not connect every home with a gigabit-capable fixed connection by 2030. Although satellite and wireless both have strong credentials and will play important roles in providing access to certain demographics, they both suffer from inherent limitations, and these limitations may grow to be more significant as data consumption inevitably increases by the end of the decade. It will be interesting to see which of the two, if any, will really be able to be game-changers in remote areas.
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