25% of Europeans use a mobile phone only, says report

25% of Europeans use a mobile phone only, says report

07 July 2008

Are European users about to ditch their landlines for mobile phones?

A recent report has declared that a quarter of Europeans only use a mobile phone. The European Commission recently completed their survey which covered around 27,000 homes over 27 nations.

The figure was even higher in those ex-Communist block areas as their respective governments said that it was cheaper to move direct to mobiles than construct new landlines. Finland, the home of Nokia, declared that 61% of the population only used mobile phones.

According to Reuters, the report also said that around half of Europeans have access to the Internet but only 36% of those users said that they could access a broadband connection.

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said to Reuters that, "Mobile data services are the future and we in Europe were the first to roll them out," Reacting to a question regarding the high price of using a mobile whilst travelling abroad, she said that, "For the one last time, I call on mobile operators to react to my request of February to voluntarily but clearly bring down mobile roaming charges for text messages and other data."

Click here to read the Reuters story