The region is near its target for universal broadband access, with 95 percent of households able to connect to broadband. Almost 70 percent of Europeans also use the internet at least once a week, versus a target of 75 percent by 2015. However, one in four Europeans have still not used the internet, and the aim is to reduce this to 15 percent by 2015.
Access to higher broadband speeds has reached 50 percent of homes with at least 30Mbps, but only 2 percent of households have taken up services of 100Mbps or more. The EC highlighted the need for greater convergence in prices for wholesale broadband access, with the methodologies and prices applied still varying widely across the EU.
The EC also will propose in early 2013 measures aimed at reducing the civil engineering costs of rolling out fibre networks, which it says account for up to 80 percent of roll-out costs. EU ministers are also finalising an agreement on the Connecting Europe Facility, to provide financing for new networks and applications.
Other targets include doubling public support for ICT R&D spending by 2020, which forms part of the EC's proposed Horizon 2020 research programme. The EC warned that spending is well below the 6 percent annual growth needed to meet the target, and the EU ICT sector now has less than half the R&D intensity of its US counterpart.
The EU's SME sector is also falling behind on adoption of e-commerce, the scorecard shows. Only 12.5 percent of SMEs sell online, versus a target of 33 percent by 2015. The EC hopes its proposed initiative to encourage cross-border e-commerce will help remedy this.
