Group hits out at declining Irish broadband speeds

Technology group IrelandOffline has today criticised Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan after Ireland slipped further down the global broadband speed charts.

"In this quarter it is now the turn of Vietnam and Macedonia to overtake Ireland for average download speeds after Mongolia went past us in May and as the rest of the developed world continues to power away from us," said a statement.

"Recently, Albania overtook us for upload speeds.

"Average Irish download speeds have declined from 5.94mbits to 5.51mbits since May 2010.

"Download speeds in Ireland are now less than half the EU average (which is 11.37mbits).

"Upload speeds in Ireland are just over one third of the EU average which is 2.82mbits."

Ireland is now 55th for upload speeds down from 51st in September, 75th for upload speeds down from 70th in September and 56th for broadband quality, up from 59th for in September.

Speaking about these findings, Eamonn Wallace chairman of IrelandOffline said: “This continues to show that the policy of relying on unreliable mobile 'midband' products does nothing for the consumers of Ireland.

“A system that cannot guarantee minimum speeds to consumers is not a suitable replacement for fixed 'line' broadband across the lesser served areas of the country.

“The only reasonable solution is a fibre optic deployment and the lack of fibre optic cables needs to be addressed urgently.”