
Telecommunication in Italy
The development of telecommunications in Italy is roughly equivalent to the average of the European Union. Under the country code +39, there were a total of 97.19 million connections in 2020. Among them were 77.58 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.3 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person.With about 25.66 million webhosts, Italy is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 1.23 million million of these, or about 5 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
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Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 53.46 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Italy ranked 61st in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 18.89 Mbit/second was significantly lower (80th place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 5th place.In mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, Italy comes 52nd with a download speed of 36.42 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 10 Mbit was only enough for 79th place.
The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in April 2022 from 181 countries.
The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the Internet in Italy from 1990 - 2020
Broadband internet in Italy 2000 - 2020

Landlines 1990 - 2020
Mobile phones 1990 - 2020
Distribution in 2020 | Italy Total | Italy percent | EU Total | EU percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 41.90 m | 70.48 % | 379.21 m | 84.74 % |
Broadband users | 18.13 m | 30.49 % | 163.72 m | 36.59 % |
Landlines | 19.61 m | 32.98 % | 160.15 m | 35.79 % |
Mobile cellulars | 77.58 m | 130.50 % | 540.56 m | 120.80 % |