The European Union (EU) trails North America and Asia in 5G deployment and coverage because different member states pursue different strategies and goals.New Ookla report explicitly stated that EU policy “acts as a barrier, not a catalyst, for 5G deployment in western and eastern European laggards.”
Regulatory policies have encouraged 5G investment in some European countries, but “they have stifled it in others”.
Independent network performance analysis firm Ookla has published a new report that benchmarks progress (or lack of it) towards the European Union’s (EU) 5G deployment objectives and highlights just how disunited Europe is in terms of its regional approach to mobile communications.
Seattle, US-based Ookla is well known for its Speedtest app and service that tests the performance and quality of internet connections, and it has used second quarter 2025 figures gleaned from its Speedtest Intelligence data to produce 5G Coverage in Europe: Progress Toward Goals Amid Lingering Disparities, which makes for interesting and frequently sobering reading.
Europe is now halfway through its 5G technology cycle and capital spending on 5G network expansion has passed its peak across most of the continent. On the legislative and regulatory side, the low- and mid-band 5G spectrum auctions are now history. Figures also show that the once seemingly permanent non-stop, runaway growth in mobile data traffic is, for the first time, slowing.
Further, European operators have adopted a more cautious and conservative approach to the deployment of 5G technologies than those in Asia and North America, particularly in the adoption of new technology variants such as 5G standalone (SA). This, European operators claim, is mainly because they face “challenging operating conditions” directly related to the unenthusiastic and limited increases in revenue per user (ARPU) that 5G subscribers are willing to pay. (When in doubt, blame the customer…)
Across the EU, the European Commission (EC) has put 5G front and centre in its bloc-wide strategy of “competitiveness” and has linked the aspects of “coverage availability, timely spectrum assignment, and vendor diversity to productivity gains and strategic autonomy.” EU’s 5G policy agenda is based three key imperatives – streamlining infrastructure deployment via initiatives such as the Gigabit Infrastructure Act (GIA) and the Digital Networks Act (DNA), subsidising “frontier” R&D through programmes including CEF Digital (Connecting Europe Facility) and SNS-JU (Smart Networking and Services Joint Undertaking) and “de-risking” vendor supply chains through the Security Toolbox and support for open RAN.
