Ireland making slow progress on broadband

IRELAND is making slow progress when it comes to rolling out broadband services, according to statistics released by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.

The OECD’s figures on broadband penetration showed Ireland in a mid-ranking 13th place when it comes to increasing the number of subscribers in 2010.

Progress has been made, with a penetration percentage increase of 8% last year, or 1.57 new subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

That is lower than the OECD net increase level, however, and is likely to prompt more calls for a quicker roll out of broadband services to parts of the country that have little or no access to broadband.

However, one of the countries with less penetration than Ireland, Iceland, is ranked in the top seven in terms of broadband growth in the past decade.

In Ireland, penetration growth has slowed in the past 18 months up to the end of last year.

According to the most recent figure 53.7% of households in Ireland had broadband, with that 2009 figure placing Ireland again below the EU 27 average.

Regarding business use of broadband Ireland ranks 8th last, with 80.2% of business of 10 or more employees having broadband access.

According to the OECD Communications Outlook 2011, published yesterday, the communications sector will play a key role in global recovery.

Overall, wireless broadband subscriptions in OECD countries had moved past the half a billion mark by the end of last year.

DSL is still the most widely used technology at 57.6%, followed by cable on 29.4%, while leading countries using fibre are Japan and Korea, which also leads the way on wireless broadband subscriptions.

Fixed broadband subscriptions have reached 300 million although growth slowed to 6% year-on-year.

The OECD also said that bundled broadband services has helped drive the increase in penetration, but warned that some bundled offers were complex, made it difficult for consumers to compare prices and harder to switch providers or drop a service.

Ireland has 941,405 fixed (wired) broadband subscriptions, but is mid-table in DSL and 3G coverage.

However, Ireland is in 25th in a table of OECD countries ranked by fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

When it comes to rankings regarding wireless broadband we fare better in 13th place, with 47.1% of the population subscribing, higher than the OECD average of 41.6%. Korea and Finland lead the way.

Overall, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) is the most popular method of providing fixed broadband at 57.6%, while standard mobile technology is the main conduit for accessing wireless broadband at 65.2%.

When it comes to average advertised broadband download speed, Ireland’s average of 9644kb per second is the third slowest, behind Mexico and Chile.

In the category of fastest advertised broadband speed across all technologies, Ireland is 5th from bottom.