National coverage by broadband technology
Greece outperformed the EU average on both national and rural levels in terms of fixed broadband coverage, with 99.2% and 96.5% of households covered, respectively. The country also continued to make strong progress in the NGA category: by mid-2020, 86.7% of Greek households had access to high speed broadband services, up by 6.1 percentage points year-on-year. In rural regions, Greece recorded a notable growth of 15.3 percentage points and passed more than half (55.4%) of rural homes.
However, Greece recorded the lowest coverage among member states in the combined FTTP & DOCSIS 3.1 category. With almost no cable networks in the country, high-speed broadband services relied on FTTP deployment which remained slow and concentrated solely on urban areas. By mid-2020, 10.2% of Greek households had access to 1Gbps-capable network services while rural coverage remained at 0.0%.
DSL remained the most prevalent fixed broadband technology in Greece, with 98.8% of households covered by the end of June 2020. Unchanged from the previous year, FWA remained a niche technology with 0.9% of households covered.
In terms of NGA technologies, VDSL and VDSL2 Vectoring remained the most widely accessible services in Greece, with 80.3% and 52.7% of homes passes, respectively. Since mid-2019, VDSL coverage grew by 6.1 percentage points while VDSL2 Vectoring increased by 4.0 percentage points. FTTP coverage also grew by 3.1 percentage points, albeit at a slower rate than in the previous year.
LTE coverage improved slightly and reached 99.2% of households by mid-2020. When considering the average LTE coverage of all Greek operators, 98.0% of Greeks had access to LTE services, up by 1.0 percentage points year-on-year. None of the Greek mobile network operators had launched commercial 5G services by mid-2020.
In rural areas of Greece, DSL remained the most prevalent technology, with 95.2% of rural homes passed. The number of networks upgraded to VDSL increased by a noteworthy 15.3 percentage points and more than half (55.4%) of rural households were able to access VDSL services by mid-2020. VDSL2 Vectoring coverage grew by 2.2 percentage points to cover one tenth (9.9%) of rural households. FTTP and cable (DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1) remained absent from rural Greek regions.
LTE coverage increased by 0.3 percentage points to pass 96.1% of rural homes by mid-2020. As in previous years, Greek rural LTE coverage remained below the EU average of 98.6%.
Regional coverage by broadband technology
Looking at Greek regions, the highest fixed broadband coverage was recorded in Athens, with Voreios Tomeas Athinon, Kentrikos Tomeas Athinon, and Notios Tomeas Athinon all reaching 100% coverage. Lesvos, Limnos was the only region to remain below the 95% threshold, with 94.1% of homes passed.
Greek regions continued to vary more strongly in terms of NGA coverage, however, the overall gap decreased from 54.2 to 48.5 percentage points by mid-2020. As in the previous year, the lowest coverage (51.5%) was recorded in Irakleio while the Central and North districts of Athens (Voreios Tomeas Athinon and Kentrikos Tomeas Athinon) provided universal coverage (100%).
Data tables for Greece
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.