
Telecommunication in Portugal
The development of telecommunications in Portugal is roughly equivalent to the average of the European Union. Under the country code +351, there were a total of 17.07 million connections in 2020. Among them were 11.85 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 3.75 million webhosts, Portugal is below the world's average by population. At the end of 2020, 228,378 million of these, or about 6 percent, were secured with SSL or comparable encryption.
Back to overview: Portugal
Development of telephone and internet connections
With an average download speed of 108.39 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Portugal ranked 19th in an international comparison. The upload rate was only 75.04 Mbit/second (21st 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, Portugal comes 19th with a download speed of 69.21 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 13 Mbit was only enough for 32nd 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 Portugal from 1990 - 2020
Broadband internet in Portugal 1999 - 2020

Landlines 1990 - 2020
Mobile phones 1990 - 2020
Distribution in 2020 | Portugal Total | Portugal percent | EU Total | EU percent |
---|---|---|---|---|
Internet users | 8.06 m | 78.26 % | 379.21 m | 84.74 % |
Broadband users | 4.16 m | 40.41 % | 163.72 m | 36.59 % |
Landlines | 5.21 m | 50.62 % | 160.15 m | 35.79 % |
Mobile cellulars | 11.85 m | 115.13 % | 540.56 m | 120.80 % |