Linköping in the leading pack on internet provision

The municipality declared that over 95% of its households enjoy a fast broadband connection

This week, the Swedish municipality of Linköping has a good reason to boast. It reported being the only one in Östergötland County to have achieved the national goal of providing 95% fast broadband coverage on its territory by 2020. The accolades are well deserved as this also puts it in the top 12 out of 290 municipalities in the country.

Linköping is already working on the next connectivity target

The government's goal was for 95 per cent of all households and companies to have access to broadband of at least 100 megabits per second by 2020. According to PTS (the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency), the municipality of Linköping reached this with 95.3 per cent coverage. 

“The goal set by the government for 2020 was very challenging as both infrastructure and actual connection were to be achieved. That Linköping achieved its goal is the result of strategic long-term work in good collaboration with market players,” explained Jakob Algulin, director of digitization in the municipality. 

The mayor of Linköping, Niklas Borg (M), was of the opinion that broadband access is crucial for contemporary life as it allows the study and work processes to run smoothly and with them, all of the local economy. Yet, to him, this was only an intermediate step towards the larger goal.

What is the larger goal?

The Swedish Government has already set the targets to be achieved by 2025 in the area of internet connectivity. Chief among them is the one stating that 98 percent of households and companies must have access to 1 Gbit/s, or fibre optic in their proximity.

“We have actually already reached the first sub-goal, that 1 gigabit should be in the absolute vicinity of 98% of Linköping residents. We continue to work with the other sub-goals, which among other things means that everyone must have access to at least 30 megabits. There must be conditions for everyone in Linköping municipality to have a good quality connection,” added Jakob Algulin.

Compared with other regions, Östergötland County has a relatively good broadband coverage. The region is ranked number 4 out of 21. However, the Swedish territory still shows large geographic variations especially between urban (91% coverage) and rural areas (56% coverage).