Is Ireland living with a great broadband myth
WE are a disconnected society. Large numbers of people have little or no connection to the internet. While the minister responsible, Pat Rabbitte, said that broadband was as important to rural Ireland as electricity was in the last century, we are still at the bottom of international tables.
According to Ookla’s household download index, Ireland’s average internet speed ranks 43rd internationally, behind Lithuania, Romania and Bulgaria. The telecoms regulator, Comreg, reported last year that we have 16,000 internet users on dial-up. A third of internet subscriptions are mobile broadband, which is expensive, of variable quality and synonymous with small data caps. Eircom says 6% of the population can’t get a DSL connection. That’s 274,000 people reliant on mobile, satellite, or fixed-wireless services. Even for those who have a DSL service, our patchwork broadband infrastructure means the speeds frequently make the service unusable.
