According to EITO, revenues from private Internet access connections in the EU rose 10.2%, reaching 33.7 billion Euro. By the end of 2008 EITO expects 114 million broadband Internet connections in W. Europe, making fast data lines available to 26% of the population. And growth will also continue in 2009, at 9% to hit 36.9 billion Euro.

By far the largest single market in Europe is Germany (8.4 billion Euro for the year 2008 and 8.5 % growth) France is up 22.5% to 4.6 billion Euro.

"Innovative additional services and falling prices are helping the connections business to achieve vigorous growth,” says EITO Chairman Bruno Lamborghini. “Fast Internet connections are being offered today in combination with low-priced telephone flat rates or online on-demand services for movies and music." At the same time, the prices for data transfer are falling. If connections with a speed of 1 Megabit per second were the standard a few years ago, today twice this rate is usual.