Rate of households with broadband higher than EU average

The rate of Irish households with broadband is higher than the EU average, the latest figures from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) has revealed.

Meanwhile, the average mobile phone user is making fewer calls, sending fewer texts, but using much more data.

ComReg has published its Quarterly Report on the Electronic Communications, outlining its findings from April 1 to June 30 this year.

It found that the average mobile voice subscriber used 214 minutes a month, a 2.2% decrease year on year, sent 84 texts (a 14.7% annual decrease) and used 4.1GB of data (up 73.1% compared to last year).

The number of voice call minutes for fixed and mobile phones were 3.3% lower compared to last year, with mobile minutes making up 77.3% of all voice minutes compared to 22.7% for fixed line minutes.

Between April and June, the average pre-paid mobile phone user topped up by €14.14 per month while the average post-paid or billed mobile user paid €42.10 per month.

More than three-quarters (76.7%) of all mobile voice minutes were classified as mobile-to-mobile, 11.3% were to fixed line phones, 8.7% were international and roaming minutes and 3.3% were “advanced voice minutes” which include calls to premium rate services.

At the end of June 2017 there were 5,900,909 mobile subscriptions, including mobile broadband and machine-to-machine (M2M) subscriptions.

M2M involves data communication between devices or systems in which there is no human intervention.

The mobile penetration rate, excluding mobile broadband and M2M subscriptions, was 102.9%.

ComReg found that the estimated household Broadband Penetration Rate for both fixed and mobile broadband at the end of June was 86%, higher than the EU average of 83%.

The estimated fixed broadband household penetration rate was 70.9%.

The number of fixed broadband subscriptions rose to 1.379m, a 3.6% increase year-on-year.

The commission has also recorded an increase in the average speeds for fixed broadband.

At the end of the second quarter of this year, 80.3% of all fixed broadband subscriptions were equal to or greater than 10Mbps, up from 75.1% at the end of June 2016.

Nearly seven in 10 (68.7%) of all fixed broadband subscriptions were equal to or greater than 30Mbps, up from 60.1% in the second quarter of 2016.

Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Denis Naughten welcomed the figures.

“This independent report clearly shows that more homes are getting access to broadband and that broadband services are getting faster,” said Mr Naughten. “I am determined to keep this momentum up until every home and business in Ireland has access to a high speed broadband solution.”

In total Irish users went through 589,916TB of data in the second quarter of the year, up 28.8% on last year. The majority of this data (524,519TB) is used by fixed broadband users.

The average fixed broadband subscriber used 126.8GB of data per month, with the majority of traffic generated by residential subscribers with an average monthly data usage per subscriber reaching 135.4GB the second quarter of this year.

The total retail revenues in the year to June 2017 were €3.092bn, up from €3.056bn over the previous year.