Southern Europe Communications 5g signal base station

The European 5G Observatory covers the 27 EU Member States, and 20 additional non-EU countries, offering a comprehensive view of 5G developments across Europe and beyond. Why use the European 5G Observatory? Fifth generation mobile communications (5G) is a key technology for digital communication and thus socio-economic development.

From a policy perspective, the European Commission has placed 5G at the core of its competitiveness strategy, closely linking coverage availability, timely spectrum assignment, and vendor diversity to productivity gains and strategic autonomy.

In Q2 2025, Nordic and Southern European countries maintained a substantial lead in 5G Availability, fueled by recent 700 MHz band deployments that drove double-digit coverage gains in countries such as Sweden and Italy.

Europe fares equally poorly in upgrading 4G base stations to 5G as well, with just one percent having been enhanced this way, compared with ninety-eight per cent in South Korea. This is also due to legacy issues from the delayed roll-out of 4G in many EU Member States.

By contrast, 5G Availability in Central and Western European laggards such as Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Hungary remains less than half that of the leaders. On average, EU mobile subscribers spent 44.5% of their time connected to 5G networks in Q2 2025, up from 32.8% a year earlier.

This research, which leverages Speedtest Intelligence® data, aims to independently benchmark progress toward the EU's flagship 5G deployment objectives, including the Digital Decade 2030 goal of achieving 100% outdoor 5G population coverage, using the world's largest consumer-initiated dataset.