Irish internet users pay twice as much for broadband, says report

INTERNET users in Ireland are paying twice as much as some European countries for high-speed phone line connections, a new report has revealed.

Broadband internet connection costs almost €40 a month with Eircom, compared to €27 in Britain and €15 in France.

The Ireland Offline report said that out of the 30 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Ireland ranked 27th in value for money.

Ireland Offline said it was the clearest evidence that broadband users in Ireland were not getting a fair deal.

“When you factor in the cost of Irish line rental, the most expensive in Europe at €24 per month, consumers in Ireland pay out substantially more for a service that is, in most cases, significantly inferior to those available in other developed countries,” said spokesman Aidan Whyte.

In Ireland, less than 10% of households have a broadband internet connection compared to the European average of 21%.

Mr Whyte said Eircom was attempting to frustrate the local loop unbundling (LLU) process, designed to allow other companies offer broadband services using the Eircom network.

“Recent attempts by the communications regulator ComReg to fix the LLUprocess ran into a brick wall when Eircom once again brought them to the Highcourt in yet another attempt to sustain their wholesale monopoly,” he said.

Broadband allows users to download music, video and pictures at increased speeds.

Eircom plans to double its connection speed from 512 kilobytes per second to one megabyte per second next month at no extra cost.

However, the Ireland Offline report said this made no difference to Ireland’s position in the pricing table. It added that many other countries had cheaper packages which were dozens of times faster. The report did not include broadband services from providers such as EsatBT and UTV because their packages included phone charges.

An Eircom spokesman said the figures in the Ireland Offline report might be “selective”.

He said Tarifica, a London-based research company, had found the European average price for a one megabyte broadbyte connection was around €55, compared to Eircom’s price of around €40.

He said when Eircom calls charges were combined with line rental, consumers paid below the EU average.