ESIS - Information society indicators

	Information Society indicators in the Member States of the EU
<<< Table of contents - Next chapter >>>	Part 2: PCs, Internet, e-commerce and television

2. Internet

2.2 Internet Service Providers

The number of ISPs differs greatly between countries : from 50 ISPs in Denmark to 500 in Italy.

Graph 40: Number of Internet Service providers in some EU countries – End 1999

Main tendencies in ISP markets :

Main mature markets (Denmark, Finland and Sweden) have already seen consolidation in the ISP industry. Furthermore, the absolute size of the market (total population) is rather limited.

In less mature markets, some major ISPs dominate the market. For example, there are 350 ISPs in Germany, but the five largest ones have 88% of all the Internet subscribers.

A trend of mergers and acquisitions should transform the sector in most of the countries.

Graph 41: Comparison between ISPs number and Internet penetration – End 1999

<<< Table of contents - Next chapter >>>

Forward

All data have been collected from readily available public sources of information (annual reports and publications by regulatory bodies, professional associations, operators, etc.). This is not a scientific document, but rather seeks to identify the key trends. To this end, where necessary, estimations have been made.

Additional data and information sources are available in the country reports that can be found on the ESIS Knowledge Base (http://www.ispo.cec.be/esis).