Ireland has the highest percentage of slow internet connections in Europe at 3.4pc and the fourth lowest percentage of connections higher than 5Mbps at 9.4pc, according to research.
Broadband lobby group IrelandOffline pointed to a survey released yesterday by Akami, a firm that delivers Windows patches to computers every month, which pointed out that the country has a higher rate of dial-up and mid-band 3G coverage than many other European nations.
“This is utterly unsurprising to us given the sheer number of Dialup and Midband 3G mobile connections in Ireland,” said IrelandOffline chairman Eamon Wallace.
“The leading countries in this survey all have wide-scale fibre deployed to the home, today.
“Irish people are more likely to be looking for that mystical Blue Light on their 3G dongles while up in the attic getting that urgent email out before they go to bed,” Wallace said.
Wallace said that second-tier countries with 20pc of their population already on fast speeds higher than 5Mbps all have plans to install fibre.
“Ireland cannot be accused of policy failure because we simply do not have a policy. It would be fairer to say we have a policy vacuum.
“Furthermore, there has been no improvement in our relative and absolute connection speeds since the previous quarterly survey was released.
“While we welcome the recent announcements of faster products from UPC and Eircom, these will have no effect on the speeds experienced across 80pc of the State, where ADSL2 and fast cable broadband are simply not available and shall not be available.
“Sadly there are no major plans to improve the deployment of fast 5Mbps-plus products beyond a few selected urban areas during 2010,” Wallace said.
By John Kennedy
Photo: Ireland has a higher rate of dial-up and mid-band 3G coverage than many other European nations, a survey released by Akami suggests
