Today’s startups have to consider many factors when choosing a country to call home, such as access to funding, customers and talent. Founders also want as little friction as possible. It comes in many forms like red tape, time spent in traffic jams — or having to repeat yourself in a call with a potential investor because of poor mobile signal.
With the latter in mind, we’ve analyzed the mobile experience in the 15 most popular start-up hubs in Europe — as identified by DEEP Ecosystems’ Start Up Heatmap Europe 2025. As we’ll see, some of these destinations are popular despite their relatively poor mobile experience. Conversely, some of the cities that aren’t at the top for popularity do very well across many of our metrics.
Some of the 15 cities we’ve investigated are also in the top 30 most visited cities globally for digital nomads — people who travel from country to country while working remotely. Digital nomads need a good mobile experience when exploring their temporary home city, calling home or when using their phone as a mobile hotspot.
Key Findings
- Copenhagen excels across the board. Our users in Europe’s 10th most popular start-up hub see the fastest overall average speeds and have the best video streaming experience. Copenhagen also places second for Voice App Experience.
- London is the most popular European city for start-up hubs, but don’t expect a good mobile experience while you’re there. Londoners have the slowest speeds and the worst experience when using over-the-top voice apps.
- Warsaw — where your over-the-top voice call is least likely to drop this summer. Poland’s capital city is in first place for Voice App Experience, narrowly ahead of Copenhagen.
- Stockholm and Vienna perform strongly. Stockholm places second for Download Speed Experience and Video Experience, while also placing third for Voice App Experience and fourth for Upload Speed Experience. Vienna places mid-table for Download Speed Experience, but is in the top five across the other three metrics.
- Berlin and Paris are very popular cities for start-ups but mainly place mid-table for mobile experience. Paris ranks highest for Download Speed Experience, placing 5th. Berlin does best for Voice App Experience, as it is in sixth place — ahead of Munich and Paris.
- Amsterdam does well on speeds and video streaming. The Netherlands’ capital sees the third fastest average download speeds, along with the second-highest score for Upload Speed Experience, and the fourth-best for Video Experience.
We’ve seen that there’s little correlation between a city’s popularity as a start-up hub and its mobile experience. The most popular start-up hubs like London and Berlin either do very poorly or place mid-table for mobile experience. Conversely. Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna do extremely well on mobile experience but aren’t as popular as London, Berlin or Paris when it comes to starting a business. Look out for more analysis on the European mobile experience landscape and please sign up to our newsletter so you don’t miss out on the latest analysis from Opensignal.
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