Portugal beats the EU on fibre and 5G, and trails it on knowing what to do with them
The Digital Decade report gives Portugal 97% very-high-capacity network coverage against an EU average of 85.5%. On basic digital skills it scores 59.2%, below the EU's 60.4%.
Building a network and teaching people to use it are two different jobs, and Portugal is only good at one of them.
The European Commission’s annual Digital Decade report puts Portugal near the top on everything that gets buried in the ground. Very-high-capacity network coverage has reached 97%, up 2.5 points during 2025, against an EU average of 85.5%. 5G reaches 65.2% of homes. And unusually, rural and inland coverage sits above the EU average, which for a country shaped like this one is not a small achievement.
Then comes the awkward half. Just 59.2% of people in Portugal have at least basic digital skills. The EU average is 60.4%, so the gap to the neighbours is narrow. The gap to the target is not: the 2030 goal is 80%, more than twenty points away.
Having fibre is not the same as using it
That is the distinction the report keeps pushing forward. A house with a very-high-capacity connection and a resident who cannot complete a simple task on a government portal are perfectly compatible states, and in Portugal they often coexist.
It slows everything downstream. Business digitalisation is the other area where the country lags, and digitalising a business is hard when a good share of the people you might hire lack the basics. Coverage is solved with civil works and money. Skills are solved with years.
The warning at the end
There is a line near the back of the report that deserves more attention than it usually gets: close to half the public funding set out in national plans is due to run out by the end of 2026. In plain terms, the money that paid for the last decade of infrastructure is drying up, and there is no guarantee the next phase gets the same room.
The Commission’s country factpage for Portugal sets out the indicators one by one. Meanwhile the Portuguese tech sector keeps growing under its own steam — Neuraspace, in Coimbra, has just raised €15.6 million to track satellites in orbit. Talent is not the missing piece. Scale is.
By Oliver Grant
Chart: Tugadaily · data European Commission
