Ireland is worst in whole of EU for home broadband

Dannyboy83

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/ireland-is-worst-in-whole-of--eu-for--home-broadband-1570870.html



WE ALWAYS suspected it, but now it's been confirmed: Irish home broadband usage is now officially the lowest in Europe, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office.
Ireland still lags behind the rest of the 27 countries in the EU, although 43pc of Irish households now have a broadband connection compared with 7pc in 2005.
Last January, the EU 27 average was 48pc -- 5pc more than Ireland in the first quarter of the year.
Par
Ireland's 43pc ranking placed it on a par with Lithuania and 3pc more than Latvia. It was 31pc lower than the Netherlands and Denmark.
Of the original 15 EU countries, Ireland has the fourth worst household broadband usage, according to the CSO's Information Society statistics.
The figures show that 70pc of Irish households that had at least one member aged 16-74 had a home computer. This compared with 55pc in 2005.
Nearly nine of every 10 of the households had their computer connected to the internet, compared with 82pc in 2005.
Three years ago -- when 7pc of Irish homes had broadband -- 39pc of households connected via modem or ISDN. Now, just 19pc are using the slower connection.
But companies have moved ahead fast into the internet age, the figures also show.
Almost 100pc of companies employing more than 10 people now have internet access, and 83pc of those have broadband access -- a major increase on the 61pc who used broadband in 2006.
Population
Most new companies that are deciding to locate in Ireland, position themselves in, or near, major population centres, where the Government's broadband programme has reached.
But concerns remain about the roll out of the plan to make broadband available on a nationwide basis.
The National Broadband Scheme aims to ensure that, by early 2010, the faster broadband service is provided in all areas of the country which do not now have a service.

SamandFrank

I'm totally not surprised by this

Sponge Bob

It is true that we are crap and that Eamonn Ryan will never do anything to improve matters.

However we are not the worst . The EU report referred to is here

Ireland is at 43% . The average is 48%

We are ahead of many of our competitors

Bulgaria 21%
Greece 21%
Latvia 40%
Hungary 42% ( and they just got VDSL )
Poland 38%
Romania 13%
Slovakia 35%

We are indeed behind all of Western Europe (the EU15 as it is known) except Portugal Greece and Italy . We are nowhere near the 60%+ Nordics , absolutely nowhere

This report was issued early last week and with no comment whatsoever from Eamonn Ryan the E-Tub of Europe himself .

It is always sad when the likes of a minister for Communications does not notice these things and even sadder when they lie away as if these reports do not exist

ntlbell

What's next?

Irish consume more Guinness than any other country?

Hank Scorpio

is it just me or does it seem these different columns about

A) How Sh1te our general broadband is

and

The availability of fixed broadband

Wont change a sh1t or influence anything.

We have seen the communications minister ask for input then totally ignore and points made and go with the worst possible solutions to fix the availability problem. Eircom i doubt every looked twice at this publication, whyh should they care, they have the country in there pocket and do what they want.

Only real way i can ever see these problems being fixed in our beatiful country is protests, mass publication in local / national newspapers. Even then it might not be enuff as legally eircom dont have to do anything.

I remember when BT etc came here and everyone thought this was gona change the competitive market, but there only renting crap copper lines off eirscum.

If the government funded smart telecom to make some type of progress with there roll out it would possibly change things standard wise. I have used smart in the past and there service is extremly crisp with excellent support. This is possibly why eircom tryed to run them out in the past and almost exceeded.

Sponge Bob

Our communications minister is the latest in a line of arrogant morons ( by and large) with one exception to the moron tag ...Dermot Ahern .

Vadrefjorde

In fact most of those countries are far better provided for than this country irrespective of their score...
100Mbit in Latvia costs 23 Lats, obviously not entire coverage but most major towns etc.. Not something thats available anywhere here..
The three baltic states have an extensive optical network (BON) , 100 MBit in estonia is about the equivalent of 50 euros. Quite ironic that people emigrate to here to improve their lives and in some respects go backwards...
As for Hungary, Romania. and Slovakia, their routing and peering is exceptional, international bandwidth is cheap and gbit colocation is commonplace, unlike in this farcical country.... I should add affordable before some wise person points to one of those rip off hosts here..

barnicles

Its probably because our speeds and QoS.
Also that absolutly splendid mobile broadband.:cool: