Greece has the slowest fixed internet in Europe, despite the significant investments that have been made in recent years, while internet services remain among the most expensive in relation to people’s incomes, according to the annual report on the digital quality of life, compiled by cyber security company Surfshark.
The report evaluates five criteria: internet affordability, internet quality, electronic infrastructure, electronic security and electronic government.
Based on the 2022 index, Greece has dropped one place from 2021, ranking 39th among 117 countries worldwide and is also 29 among 38 European countries surveyed. This is because, in the five criteria evaluated by Surfshark, Greece improved its position only to the one related to digital governance.
The report also shows that an internet user in Greece needs to work every month about 12 minutes to buy 1 GB of data for his mobile phone, six times more than what is needed in Bulgaria and 149 times more than what is needed in Israel, the country with the lowest fees which also tops this year’s index.
Breaking down each criterion, financial ability to pay for Internet services essentially measures whether the charges are cheap for the income of the citizens. This is Greece’s “Achilles heel,” as it is where it performs the worst, ranking 67th, down from 61st last year. This is because this year, in order to buy 1 GB of mobile data, users in Greece will have to work 6 seconds longer compared to last year. Fixed internet connection fees are also high. In order to pay for the cheapest connection, Greeks have to work three hours and 46 minutes every month, 12 times more than households in Israel, where it is enough to work 19 minutes a month.
Internet quality mainly measures speed: Greece is ranked 55th among 117 countries, with the low performance mainly related to the speed of fixed internet connections. Regarding mobile internet speed, Greece ranks 20th, with a speed of 97.5 Mbps/second. In contrast, the internet speeds at home are an average of 40.4 Mbps/second, which ranks Greece in 84th place.
According to Surfshark, fixed internet speed in Greece is two times lower than in Bulgaria, while mobile internet speed are 36% lower.
In internet security, Greece maintains the 1st place, as in last year’s ranking, something particularly important for users, individuals and businesses, but also for the functioning of the public administration.
In e-governance, the country ranks 55th from 59th last year, with the improvement due to the readiness of the state and businesses to use artificial intelligence. In terms of this sub-criterion, Greece moved up ten places and ranks 48th from 58th in last year’s report.
The findings that are of particular importance considering that even after the pandemic, teleworking and remote learning are still being used to a significant extent, while now many forms of entertainment, such as streaming platforms, require an Internet connection and high speeds.
PS The report only confirms what we, troubled, residents in Greece have been knowing since …ever.
Yes, every year the same story, I think we all know.
It’s poor but sufficient for netflix, websurfing and gaming,
If you need this for work with lots of uploading it’s pretty annoying but that is life in Greece, pretty annoying with no hope for improvement.
It’s really pathetic how this country looks, can’t walk normally on the sidewalks, its more like an obstacle course.
Yamas!
On agistri I pay a premium to receive between 25-35 gbps of 29 euros per month for the month of August while the island was full of holidaymakers it dropped as low as 3 gbps pathetic that they can’t install decent equipment to cater for the influx during the holidays
so its like basically everything else in this country, crappier and more expensive than anywhere else on the continent..
not surprised!
Recently we were told quite categorically, by OTE, that all of Greece had good internet facilities, During the discussion the OTE representative admitted that was there very few areas which had no access to the net. This person tried to convince us that it was available in our area (in Rhodes). She tracked our location on Google Earth and then admitted we were one of the very few areas where there was no internet access. The reason for this is that OTE will not facilitate landlines into our houses.
There is a OTE box which is within 200 m of my home. In this are 300 lines which are available to all houses in my immediate area (more than enough). Will OTE run cables from that box into our area? NO
OTE get off your bums and do something about it.
and if you do manage to get a quote for a landline… I was quoted 15 eur/meter for a distance from the nearest box as they computed it- very close to your 200m- the total cost for installation was going to run into the thousands- and i said no thanks.
200 meters of weather resistant telco cable of the appropriate type costs , lets say even 200 bucks. Labor for stringing it along the poles (yes there are already poles this is inside the village and e.g. the house across the way has a phone line from 20 or 30 years back).. lets say even a 3 man crew is there all day long.. you telling me those people are getting paid 500 bucks a day each? they’re lucky if theyre getting paid 50 bucks a day. If i were allowed to I could hire an electrician to run the cable and he’d charge me max maybe 200 bucks for a few hours’ work..and he’d be happy with that rate! generous cost, 400 bucks.
I’d pay that to have a landline at the house. so the rest of the 3000 is going exactly.. where? into some already large and full pockets most likely!
and that’s how everything in this country works!
Although it was a couple of years ago now OTE project officer on Rhodes) that it would cost about €7000 to run fibre optic cables from the box with 300 lines as I said above. They would not use poles. We, as residents, would have to pay for a trench to be dug as it is supposedly a private road.. OTE say the would lay the cables free of charge.
Cosmote sells packages with fast internet and this is not true. I upgraded to 100 mbps so I could stream from my IPTV service, I barely get 50 mbps, which this causes my IPTV service to continuously stop. This is the worst internet I’ve ever experienced. They should not be selling packages if they can’t provide the internet speed. Too bad I’m stuck with this for another year.
As my internet on kefalonia was constantly dropping out for a couple of hours again yesterday, (when it was on in between times it was 2-3 gb speeds) I said to my wife,” this is Greece all over, their putting on line all sorts of platforms, for the convenience of the citizens, which become totally unusable when the internet is so poor”
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to matter how much you complain nothing changes
of course. Have complained many times in the past, nothing happened.