Ireland boasts Europe’s worst broadband speeds
The OECD broadband statistics for October 2009 show that Ireland dropped to 29th position for broadband speed last October, after being placed 26th in September 2008.
“We are dead last in Europe and second last in the OECD with only Mexico behind us,” said Fine Gael’s communications spokesperson Simon Coveney. He pointed out that having high speed broadband was a key part of building any smart economy because it attracts new jobs and investment.
“While Communications Minister Eamon Ryan has spent 2½ years talking a lot about smart economies and green jobs, the reality shown by these latest figures is that he has utterly failed to match words with action,” he said.
“His failure is costing Ireland jobs at a time when we can least afford it.”
He also claimed that most of the big international technology companies based in Ireland were complaining in private about the dire state of Irish broadband.
Mr Coveney said Fine Gael was the only party to have drafted a credible plan to put Ireland into the top five OECD countries in relation to broadband speed.
The director of IBEC’s telecommunications and internet federation, Tommy McCabe said substantial progress had been made in Ireland over the past six months.
Comreg’s latest 2010 quarterly report showed that 1.4m households now had broadband, equating to a penetration rate of 57.9% that was above the EU rate of 55.5%. The report also revealed that 92% of all business in Ireland had internet access. Half were using speeds in the region of 10,000 kilobits per second, while 23% were using speeds of between 10,000 and 20,000 kbit/s
Mr McCabe said cable provider UPC would be rolling out broadband services to over 600,000 homes with speeds of 100,000 kbit/s per second, while Eircom and other fixed-line service providers are offering consumers broadband speeds of up to 24,000 kbit/s.
A spokesperson for the Minister for Communications said broadband speeds now being realised in Ireland was evidence that the Government’s policy of competition in the market was working.
