Internet in Denmark
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In an international context
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...
is viewed as a somewhat peculiar country when it comes to internet access. The former state owned
telephone company A telephone company, also known as a telco, telephone service provider, or telecommunications operator, is a kind of communications service provider (CSP), more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunicat ...
TDC owns the entire last mile infrastructure in terms of copper telephone lines and the vast majority of the
coaxial cable Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced ) is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric ( insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a p ...
infrastructure as well. Even though the Danish telecommunications infrastructure is very heavily dominated by one company, Danish internet customers still enjoy fair prices and a wide availability of different
next generation access Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...
internet connections in comparison with most other EU countries. Furthermore, TDCs de facto
monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...
on last mile infrastructure has come under attack. In the last decade regional power companies have formed national business alliances aimed at implementing
FTTH Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber op ...
for private and business end users. In 2012, Denmark was ranked third by
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...
in terms of wired broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants (see the bar chart below). The same year 99,9 % of all households and companies were able to connect to the internet via a broadband connection of at least 2 Mbit/s. As of 2015, 1.3 million Danish households are connected to the internet via TDC's coax and fiber, all of whom will soon have the opportunity to receive one gigabit per second connection. In 2012, Denmark performed poorly in terms of next generation access in rural areas compared to several other countries in the EU and the US.


History

In May 1985, The
Nordic Council of Ministers The Nordic Council of Ministers is an intergovernmental forum established after the Helsinki Treaty. The purpose of the Nordic Council of Ministers is to complement the Nordic Council and promote Nordic cooperation. Structure The governme ...
granted 9.2 million NOK (roughly the equivalent of £1 million) to a Nordic university network, named
NORDUnet NORDUnet is an international collaboration between the National research and education networks in the Nordic countries. Members The members of NORDUnet are: * SUNET of Sweden * UNINETT of Norway * FUNET of Finland * Forskningsnettet of De ...
. At the same time, the Nordic telecommunication companies created a joint company providing one-stop shopping for inter-Nordic lines called Scantele, running on a 64 kbit/s line which made it easy to create NORDUnet. In 1988 NORDUnet became operational and connected to the American
National Science Foundation Network The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The p ...
(NSFnet) via a 56 kbit/s satellite line to the John von Neumann Center at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
, New Jersey, and then on to the NSFnet which itself had only initiated operations in 1986 using the
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...
standard. Besides the US's NSFnet (which was the immediate forerunner of the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
), the NORDUnet was also connected to a similar European network such as the
European Academic and Research Network The European Academic and Research Network (EARN) was a computer network connecting universities and research institutions across Europe, and was connected in 1983 via transatlantic circuits and a gateway funded by IBM to BITNET, its peer in the Un ...
(EARN) which again connected to different
National research and education network A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country. It is usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backb ...
s. Around the same time as the establishing of NORDUnet, Denmark established its own
national research and education network A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country. It is usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backb ...
called
Danish Network for Research and Education The Danish Research Network, "Forskningsnettet", is a joint high-speed network for universities and the research community in Denmark. Today, the Danish Research Network has approximately 100 subscribers and more than 100,000 users every day. The ...
(also known as DeIC), which became operational in 1987, thus connecting the research departments of several Danish universities with one another and the world via NORDUnet. In 1994, the
Danish Internet Exchange Point Danish Internet Exchange Point (DIX) is operated by i2http://www.i2.dk/ in Kongens Lyngby north of Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Two points of presence were opened since 2011. Its purpose is to alleviate the exchange of data traffic betwee ...
(DIX) was set up to facilitate easy communication between different
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s (ISPs). Denmark's first
broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
connections for households were offered as Internet over
cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...
by the country's second-largest cable TV provider Stofa in 1996, to a single town – three years before the first ADSL products were offered (see xDSL section below). In 1998 Stofa started a general roll-out to other cities and towns. At the end of 2000, Denmark's largest cable TV provider TDC launched a similar product.


xDSL

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...
was introduced commercially to
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...
in 1999 by the then 4-year-old company Cybercity. TDC launched its own ADSL products the following year and quickly became the dominant ADSL company In 2005 a new company Fullrate established itself as a low cost ISP and managed to obtain a market share of 4,1 percent between 2005 and 2009. Fullrate concentrated its broadband products on urban areas of more than 12.000 inhabitants and
ADSL2 ITU G.992.3 is an ITU (International Telecommunication Union) standard, also referred to as ADSL2 or G.dmt.bis. It optionally extends the capability of basic ADSL in data rates to 12 Mbit/s downstream and, depending on Annex version, up to 3 ...
+ technology. Fullrate was bought by TDC in 2008. TDC launched its first
VDSL2 Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber lin ...
products in June 2007 but until 2011 the countrywide VDSL2 coverage was nonetheless no greater than 2% only achieving 21% by the year 2012. As of the end of 2012, TDC controlled 74% of the Danish xDSL market and roughly about half of all internet connections were based on xDSL technology. As of 2013 98% of all house holds and companies were able to access a xDSL connection of at least 2 Mbit/s downstream.


Mobile broadband

In stark contrast to the infrastructure of cable based internet connections the Danish
mobile broadband Mobile broadband is the marketing term for Wireless broadband, wireless Internet access via mobile networks. Access to the network can be made through a portable modem, wireless modem, or a Tablet computer, tablet/smartphone (possibly Tetherin ...
infrastructure is owned by four different telephone companies ( 3,
Telenor Telenor ASA ( or ) is a Norwegian majority state-owned multinational telecommunications company headquartered at Fornebu in Bærum, close to Oslo. It is one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications companies with operations worldwide, ...
, Telia and TDC) and divided into 3 independent networks (Telia and Telenor share a joint mobile network) each with countrywide 2G coverage and close to countrywide 3G coverage. Competition is fierce and best described as an all out
price war A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...
which commentators (such as ComputerWorld.dk) and the industry itself alike has characterized as unsustainable in the long run. 4G has as of 2012 only achieved 65% coverage. Per terms of several government
public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
spectrum auction A spectrum auction is a process whereby a government uses an auction system to sell the rights to transmit signals over specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum and to assign scarce spectrum resources. Depending on the specific auction form ...
ings of 4G licenses more than 99% of the Danish population must be covered by at least a 10 Mbit/s 4G service by 2015. Maps of publicly available coverage information from the Danish MNOs can be viewed on websites lik
Telemaster.dk
an
Masterdatabasen.dk


FTTP

The traditional telephone companies have historically shown little to no interest in implementing fiber to the premises (FTTP). In 2005 this led 14 local and regional power companies to invest around 1 billion pounds between 2005 and 2013 in building a FTTP infrastructure from scratch. The power companies usually roll out fiber optic cables when they need to dig in an area due to works on subterranean power cables.


Sale of DONG Energy's FTTH network

The biggest of these power companies – the state-owned
DONG Energy Dong or DONG may refer to: Places * Dong Lake, or East Lake, a lake in China * Dong, Arunachal Pradesh, a village in India * Dong (administrative division) (동 or 洞), a neighborhood division in Korea Persons *Queen Dong (1623–1681), princes ...
– did, however, sell its entire consumer-facing fiber optic network to TDC in 2009 and exited the
ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
market. This left the capital city of
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
and a vast area north of Copenhagen without any power company to coordinate a roll-out of
FTTH Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber op ...
with works on subterranean power cables. Since the purchase of DONG Energy's fiber optic network, the roll-out of FTTH in the Copenhagen area has practically been ignored by TDC and left to a few small companies focusing on a small number of clients. Even though the fiber optic cables were in the ground TDC emphasized the marketing of fiber optic products to the extent of not mentioning it as a product on its own webpage. Furthermore, fiber optic connections were downgraded to asymmetric speeds resembling that of
VDSL Very high-speed digital subscriber line (VDSL) and very high-speed digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) are digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies providing data transmission faster than the earlier standards of asymmetric digital subscriber line ...
2. In 2012 TDC responded to the criticism by stating that "the Danes don't care about fiber optics". TDC also emphasized that the company did use the fiber optics network it had purchased from DONG Energy, but usually as a
backbone The backbone is the vertebral column of a vertebrate. Arts, entertainment, and media Film * ''Backbone'' (1923 film), a 1923 lost silent film starring Alfred Lunt * ''Backbone'' (1975 film), a 1975 Yugoslavian drama directed by Vlatko Gilić M ...
for its VDSL2 products. In the meantime the remaining 13 local and regional power companies have managed to build up a customer base of more than 250.000 house holds and as of 2013 43% of all Danish households had access to FTTH. The biggest FTTP player is FIBIA.


DOCSIS

As of 2013,
DOCSIS Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...
3 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) contributed more than any other technology to Denmark's
next generation access Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...
(NGA) coverage, 63% of all households are able to access a DOCSIS connection and 62% of all households are able to access a DOCSIS 3 connection. While DOCSIS 3 has the same availability as
xDSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...
in the major cities it is close to nonexistent in the rural areas. TDC controls 66% of the market for DOCSIS connections via its
subsidiary company A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company (law), company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company ...
YouSee YouSee is the largest quadruple play service provider in Denmark, and is a part of Nuuday which is a spun-off company from TDC Group, the largest telecommunications company in Denmark which was split into two separate companies. YouSee currently ...
while the second-largest
market share Market share is the percentage of the total revenue or sales in a market that a company's business makes up. For example, if there are 50,000 units sold per year in a given industry, a company whose sales were 5,000 of those units would have a ...
of around 10% is controlled by Stofa, which was purchased in 2014 by the biggest FTTH company S.E (abbreviation for Southern Energy). S.E has referred to the purchase of Stofa as a direct attempt to challenge TDC's dominant position in the cable TV and DOCSIS market. Due to TDC's very dominant position, The Danish Business Authority has ordered TDC to open its
coaxial In geometry, coaxial means that several three-dimensional linear or planar forms share a common axis. The two-dimensional analog is ''concentric''. Common examples: A coaxial cable is a three-dimensional linear structure. It has a wire conduc ...
network to other competitors since 2009. This has however not brought any new competitors to compete with TDC on DOCSIS 3 connections; this is because TDC has set up its system in such a way that any customer has to buy regular cable TV from TDC before the customer can purchase any DOCSIS 3 connection from a competitor. In 2014, The Danish Business Authority started taking steps towards new regulation demanding that TDC should open its coaxial network in terms of both cable TV and DOCSIS 3 to
arbitrage In economics and finance, arbitrage (, ) is the practice of taking advantage of a difference in prices in two or more markets; striking a combination of matching deals to capitalise on the difference, the profit being the difference between the ...
competitors.


WiMAX

Until 2009,
Clearwire Clearwire Corporation (stylized as clearw˙re) was a telecommunications operator which provided mobile and fixed wireless broadband communications services to retail and wholesale customers in the United States, Belgium, Ireland and Spain. Clearw ...
operated a somewhat countrywide
WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMAX ...
(Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) network with about 10,000 customers. After the bankruptcy of Clearewire's Danish subsidiary its customers were taken over by the WiMAX ISP Skyline which already had its own customer base of around 10.000 - mostly situated in
Jutland Jutland ( da, Jylland ; german: Jütland ; ang, Ēota land ), known anciently as the Cimbric or Cimbrian Peninsula ( la, Cimbricus Chersonesus; da, den Kimbriske Halvø, links=no or ; german: Kimbrische Halbinsel, links=no), is a peninsula of ...
and
Funen Funen ( da, Fyn, ), with an area of , is the third-largest island of Denmark, after Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy. It is the 165th-largest island in the world. It is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 469,947 as of ...
. From 2009-2012 Skyline's customer base grew to about 40,000 subscribers, however Skyline filed for bankruptcy on 10 May 2012 saying that the development of 4G services along with falling market prices had made it unsustainable for the company to continue its enterprise. As of 2014, the small 10-man company AirNet operated a scattered but growing WiMAX network focusing on rural areas with poor or no broadband access and offering speeds of up to 20/2 Mbit/s down- and upstream, respectively.


Internet censorship

According to the
OpenNet Initiative The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) was a joint project whose goal was to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employed a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigato ...
there is "no evidence" that Denmark is censoring its citizens internet access in terms of political content, social content, conflict and security content or web sites that provide internet tools (such as e-mail, internet hosting, search, translation etc.) A high court did however order the Danish
ISP An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s to block the sites
The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute mag ...
and AllOfMP3 in a 2008
civil lawsuit - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
on the grounds of
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
s infringements.


List of Internet Service Providers

Major providers: * TDC ((former incumbent - aka. state owned), incl.
YouSee YouSee is the largest quadruple play service provider in Denmark, and is a part of Nuuday which is a spun-off company from TDC Group, the largest telecommunications company in Denmark which was split into two separate companies. YouSee currently ...
, Fullrate and ComX etc.). *
Telenor Telenor ASA ( or ) is a Norwegian majority state-owned multinational telecommunications company headquartered at Fornebu in Bærum, close to Oslo. It is one of the world's largest mobile telecommunications companies with operations worldwide, ...
. * Telia. * 3 (Mobile broadband only). Other notable providers: * Stofa - a part of S.E (DOCSIS 3 and FTTH only) * Waoo (joint customer front for 15 local Danish power companies, not including S.E - FTTH only) * Nianet (joint business customer front for 16 local Danish power companies, including S.E - FTTP only) * Gigabit.dk - first Danish Internet service provider to let private households get 5000/5000 Mbit/s via TDC's wholesale fibernet infrastructure


Footnotes


References

{{Internet in Europe