
Telecommunication in the Netherlands
The development of telecommunications in the Netherlands is roughly equivalent to the United States. Under the country code +31, there were a total of 26.91 million connections in 2021. Among them were 21.89 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.2 per person. In the US, this figure is 1.1 mobile phones per person.With about 13.70 million webhosts, the Netherlands is roughly in the the world's average. At the end of 2020, 2.39 million of these, or about 17 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Netherlands
Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 121.55 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, the Netherlands rank 20th in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 39.54 Mbit/second was significantly lower (46th place).In mobile internet, i.e., on tablets and smartphones, the Netherlands come 7th with a download speed of 112.15 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 17 Mbit was only enough for 14th 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 the Netherlands from 1990 - 2021
Broadband internet in the Netherlands 1998 - 2021

Landlines 1990 - 2021
Mobile phones 1990 - 2021
Distribution in 2021 | Netherlands Total | Netherlands percent | USA Total | USA percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Broadband users | 7.62 m | 43.43 % | 127.03 m | 38.27 % |
Landlines | 5.02 m | 28.65 % | 97.11 m | 29.26 % |
Mobile cellulars | 21.89 m | 124.84 % | 361.62 m | 108.96 % |