Fibre optic connections available to nearly 2 million households

At the end of September 2024, Finland's fibre-optic broadband network was made available to nearly 2 million homes, or 68% of Finnish households, representing a 7 percentage-point increase in availability over a single year. The best fibre-optic coverage was recorded in Åland (98%), Ostrobothnia (81%), North Ostrobothnia (81%), and Pirkanmaa (78%).

According to the European Union's digital development goals, all households should have access to 1 Gbps download speeds by 2030. Finland has also specified this goal in its own digital compass.

High-speed, 1 Gbps download speeds are primarily the domain of fibre-optic connections, but cable modem networks can also reach similar download speeds. Cable modem networks are more common especially in urban areas. "However, the primary advantage of the fibre-optic network is its support for higher upload speeds, which cannot generally be achieved on cable modem networks. Upload speeds become relevant in scenarios where users need to send large amounts of data, for example to cloud services," explains Senior Specialist Joonas Sotaniemi.

At the end of September 2024, 1 Gbps download speeds were available to 75% of Finnish households, representing a 4 percentage-point increase in availability over the year. In 46 municipalities, over 89% of households could opt for gigabit broadband connections, while in 44 municipalities, household coverage remained below 30%. In addition, 13 municipalities had no gigabit options available.

High-speed broadband connections also include other connections with a download speed of at least 100 Mbps, which were available to 81% of households. Many of these networks could also be updated to enable gigabit speeds by making minor changes to, for example, the networking hardware used by operators.