Stuck in the Basement: Where European Fibre Goes to Stall

Europe has built the fibre. The apartment block is where it stalls.

How many households live in apartment buildings tells you surprisingly little about how many of them use fibre. Across our ten focus markets, the share of households living in multi-dwelling buildings and the FTTH/B take-up rate barely move together — a correlation of about 0.17.

Spain and France convert more than 89% of homes passed into subscribers. Germany and Austria, where more than half of households live in MDUs, convert fewer than one in four. That gap is the story of European MDU connectivity in 2026.

According to IDATE's FTTH/B Market Panorama for the FTTH Council Europe, fibre now passes 191 million homes across the EU27 and the UK — 76.8% of households. Only 105 million subscribe, a take-up rate of 54.9%. IDATE's own conclusion is that the priority has shifted from building networks to monetizing them. For anyone who owns, wires, manages or equips a multi-dwelling unit (MDU), that shift matters.

The next wave of fibre adoption will not be won in the street cabinet. It will be won in the riser, the basement and the resident's living room.

That is exactly the ground we will cover at RISER Summit — the European Summit for Residential MDU Connectivity and Proptech — in Amsterdam from April 6 to 8, 2027.

The numbers: ten markets side by side

Spain is both the most vertical market and the fibre adoption leader, but it is the exception, not the rule. The table below sets the share of households living in multi-dwelling buildings against IDATE's September 2025 fibre metrics, sorted by MDU share.

Four clusters, one lesson

The measure that tracks fibre take-up is not how many households live in MDUs, but how many people live in large apartment buildings. The share of the population in buildings of ten or more flats correlates with take-up at about 0.52 — roughly three times the 0.17 of the overall MDU household share. Large, professionally managed buildings are easier to wire once and sell many times.

The ten markets fall into four groups:

1. Vertical and converted: Spain and Sweden

Spain (93.3% take-up) and Sweden (77.3%) both house more than 40% of their people in buildings of ten or more flats, and both turned that density into subscribers. Spain's common telecom infrastructure rules have required shared in-building wiring for years, so most blocks were fibre-ready before operators arrived. Sweden got there through municipal open networks and housing companies that wire buildings and contract connectivity on behalf of residents. In both cases the building, not the individual flat, is the unit of sale.

2. The policy-made converter: France

France (89.4% take-up) has a below-average MDU share — 43.2% of households in multi-dwelling buildings against 52.8% for the EU — yet it is Europe's largest fibre market with 26.3 million subscribers. Its success is regulatory rather than demographic: fibre-ready rules for new buildings and symmetric regulation of the in-building segment meant one operator wires each building and every retailer can sell over it. France shows that the right in-building framework can outrun housing stock.

3. Vertical but stalled: Germany, Italy, Austria and Poland

This is the largest untapped pool of MDU fibre in Europe. Between 54% and 69% of households in these four countries live in MDUs, yet take-up runs from 22.8% in Austria to 41.2% in Poland.

• Germany (24.6%): the in-building segment (NE4, from basement to flat) is the bottleneck. Cable TV was long bundled into rent through the operating-cost privilege, which ended in July 2024, and many buildings still stop fibre in the basement.
• Italy (29.9%): a large FTTC copper base still delivers good enough speeds, and the wholesale map is split between Open Fiber and FiberCop, which slows migration.
• Austria (22.8%): coverage is only 58%, and generous mobile broadband is a strong substitute for fixed lines in apartments.
• Poland (41.2%): coverage is high at 83.1% and one in three people lives in a large block, but a crowded market of cable operators and local ISPs keeps many households on legacy services.

4. Low-rise and cable-heavy: the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK

Fewer than a third of households in these markets live in MDUs, and all three have strong cable incumbents. The Netherlands has 92.4% coverage but only 42.6% take-up, because nationwide cable competes at gigabit speeds. Belgium has the lowest coverage (41.8%) and penetration (11.8%) of the ten. The UK is the one to watch: take-up jumped from 37.1% to 47.7% in a year, on the back of 3.6 million net additions — the most of any European country — as altnets and Openreach push migration.

Why density alone does not deliver adoption

An apartment building concentrates demand, but it also concentrates friction. Five factors decide whether a vertical market converts:

• In-building wiring. Fibre that stops in the basement is counted as passed, not used. The European Commission estimated about €11.5 billion of capex just to fibre buildings lacking suitable internal infrastructure.
• Who decides for the building. Where a landlord, housing company or co-op can contract once for all units — as in Sweden — conversion is fast. Where every tenant must be won one by one, it is slow.
• Cable and good enough copper. DOCSIS 3.1 cable in the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland, and VDSL in Germany and Italy, deliver speeds most households accept. Migration waits for a push, usually copper switch-off.
• Landlord billing rules. Germany's end of the cable operating-cost privilege in July 2024 broke a decades-old bulk model. Tenant free-choice rules across the EU make classic bulk internet hard, so the model shifts to open-access building networks paired with managed services.
• Mobile substitution. In Austria in particular, unlimited mobile and 5G fixed wireless access keep many apartment households off fixed lines altogether.

The policy tide is now turning in favour of the building. The Gigabit Infrastructure Act requires new and majorly renovated buildings to be fibre-ready from February 2026, and national reforms such as Germany's pending telecoms law amendment aim to give operators a right to wire whole buildings. The question is no longer whether European MDUs get fibre, but who captures the value once they do.

What it means for operators, owners and vendors

Europe's MDU opportunity is shifting from building fibre to converting and monetizing it inside the building. Each stakeholder has a different job to do:

• Fibre operators and altnets in the stalled cluster (Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland) should target large blocks and institutional portfolios first — one agreement moves dozens or hundreds of units.
• Property owners and housing companies hold the key to the riser. Fibre-ready, open-access buildings are becoming a compliance requirement for new builds and a value driver for existing stock.
• Managed service providers and integrators have their opening where fibre ends and experience begins. Managed Wi-Fi turns a passive fibre line into a service residents notice and landlords can market.
• Equipment and platform vendors should read the clusters as a go-to-market map. Spain, Sweden and France are replacement and upsell markets; Germany, Italy, Austria and Poland are greenfield conversion markets where the in-building design is still being decided.

Two principles hold in every market: follow the large buildings, and win the in-building layer. That is where Europe's remaining 45% of unconverted homes passed will be decided.

Originally published by Maravedis on 29 September 2026. Reproduced with permission. Maravedis