WHAT’S THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NETHERLANDS IN THE COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY?

A little geography

Following on from our well-received, in-depth look at the telecoms industry in Germany for the winter issue, we’re making our way up toward the North Sea from Deutschland to discover what’s going on in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands is a small but highly populated country. The size of this low-lying country is around 16,000 square miles (41,550 square km), which is just a little larger than Maryland but is home to about the same number of people who live in Florida. The biggest city is Amsterdam the capital and commercial centre. The Netherlands borders Germany to the west and south-west, Belgium to the south and south-east, and just a short 110-mile (175 km) boat trip west across the North Sea is the United Kingdom.

While we’re discussing this much-loved European country, we should take a moment to clear up the confusion about what to officially call it. A bad habit has been around for many years is interchanging the names “Holland” and “The Netherlands.” These two places are not the same but the rumour still persists. The Netherlands is a country made up of 12 provinces. Two of the provinces with a strong identity are North and South Holland, which some began substituting for the name of the entire country. Calling the Netherlands ‘Holland’ is like calling the United States “Texas.”

Fun fact: The Netherlands has the highest English-proficiency in the world. Nine out of ten Dutch people speak English as a second language and considering more than half of the population also speak German, many Dutch speak at least three languages.

The combination of a high population and small country size enables the people of Netherlands to be highly connected. With  491 people per square mile and 93 percent of its population online, it’s much denser and more connected than some of its neighbours, such as France with 100 people per square mile and 86 percent of online; and Spain at 240 with 82 percent online.

A little history

Why is the Netherlands is so well connected and how did it all begin? It’s a result of massive investment from the government to support their country’s people and just the way the Dutch like to work:

• In 1852, the Dutch government formed a company, PTT (Post, Telegraph and Telephone) and began installing and operating telegraph lines. Within 100 years, the telephone went from being a luxury to a necessity. The Dutch have always been early and quick adopters of new technology.
• In 1989, the PTT was converted from a public organisation into a commercial company with shares being issued on the Amsterdam stock exchange and a listing in New York following just a year later.
• The Netherlands is the world leader in working from home. About 20 percent of the workforce regularly works in this way. Compare this to the European average of seven percent, and you can quickly see why easy access to broadband is a priority.

Fun fact: CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray were invented in the Netherlands: Philips developed CDs in 1979 in a joint project with Sony in Eindhoven. They also developed cassette tapes and popularised many home electronics items in Europe.

A little on the economy

The Netherlands is one of the most open economies in the world and is one of the world’s top five biggest exporters. The country is home to a number of well-known multinationals and banks. The second largest private global company in the world, Shell, is located in Amsterdam. Heineken, ING Group, TomTom, Booking.com and Philips are also based in Amsterdam and just 36 miles (58 km) down the road is Rotterdam, which is the headquarters of Unilever. Even thousands of non-Dutch companies, including Airbus and Ikea, have adopted the Netherlands for their headquarters because of the very attractive corporate tax rates.

Which industry is benefitting the most from being so well connected to the rest of the world? It’s the gaming sector -- the Netherlands is a pretty serious player in the global gaming industry.

The Netherlands has one of the fastest growing, most highly acclaimed and most active online gaming markets in the world -- the third largest in Europe -- and accounts for 35 percent of total spend in the country. But why is gaming so huge? With the country’s advanced  communications infrastructure, the industry can utilise high-capacity, low-latency fibre bandwidth that can handle sophisticated graphics and twitch gameplay. With this growth, the number of people employed in the Dutch gaming industry has doubled. Dutch colleges and universities have responded to these trends by developing courses to support the sector’s development.

Communications Infrastructure

The country’s North Sea border helps it step into the limelight as a true telco superhero; the country is a hotspot for submarine cables; there are six subsea cable landings along the North Sea coastline of the Netherlands: AC-1, Concerto, Farland North, TAT-14, UL-NL14 and the Circe North cable which is a wholly-owned Zayo asset.

If you’re looking at expanding to the Netherlands and across Europe, get in touch with your Zayo sales representative today to discover our reach and your options!