
Telecommunication in Italy
The development of telecommunications in Italy is roughly equivalent to the United States. Under the country code +39, there were a total of 98.11 million connections in 2021. Among them were 78.11 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.3 per person. In the US, this figure is 1.1 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 of these, or about 5 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Italy
Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 60.38 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Italy ranks 65th in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 19.23 Mbit/second was significantly lower (92nd place).In mobile internet, i.e., on tablets and smartphones, Italy comes 49th with a download speed of 42.68 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 9 Mbit was only enough for 89th place.
The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in December 2022 from 178 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 percent mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.
Access to the internet in Italy from 1990 - 2021
Broadband internet in Italy 2000 - 2021

Landlines 1990 - 2021
Mobile phones 1990 - 2021
Distribution in 2021 | Italy Total | Italy percent | USA Total | USA percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Broadband users | 18.69 m | 31.61 % | 127.03 m | 38.27 % |
Landlines | 19.99 m | 33.83 % | 97.11 m | 29.26 % |
Mobile cellulars | 78.11 m | 132.15 % | 361.62 m | 108.96 % |