
Telecommunication in the Netherlands
The development of telecommunications in the Netherlands is roughly equivalent to the average of the European Union. Under the country code +31, there were a total of 26.35 million connections in 2020. Among them were 21.42 million mobile phones, which corresponds to an average of 1.2 per person. In the EU, this figure is 1.2 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 million of these, or about 17 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
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Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 105.45 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, the Netherlands ranked 22nd in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 32.25 Mbit/second was significantly lower (47th 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, the Netherlands come 7th with a download speed of 104.46 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 16 Mbit was only enough for 19th 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 the Netherlands from 1990 - 2020
Broadband internet in the Netherlands 1998 - 2020

Landlines 1990 - 2020
Mobile phones 1990 - 2020
Distribution in 2020 | Netherlands Total | Netherlands percent | EU Total | EU percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 15.93 m | 91.33 % | 379.21 m | 84.74 % |
Broadband users | 7.53 m | 43.14 % | 163.72 m | 36.59 % |
Landlines | 4.94 m | 28.31 % | 160.15 m | 35.79 % |
Mobile cellulars | 21.42 m | 122.78 % | 540.56 m | 120.80 % |