Internet lobby group Ireland Offline have criticised Communications Minister Eamon Ryan, saying that Ireland’s broadband speeds have continued to decline.
According to the group, in this quarter, Ireland has been overtaken by Vietnam and Macedonia for average download speeds. They also noted that Albania has overtaken Ireland for upload speeds.
They say that download speeds are less than half the EU average, which is 11.37mbits, and upload speeds are only over one-third of the EU average of 2.82mbits.
Since May, IrelandOffline states that Irish download speeds have declined from 5.94mbits to 5.51mbits. Upload speeds have held at 0.97mbits from 0.94mbits since the summer.
This places Ireland as 55th in the world for download speeds, down from 51st in September and 41st in May.
The group also notes that Ireland is now 75th for upload speeds, down from 70th in September and from 63rd in May.
However, Ireland ranks 56th for broadband quality, which is up from 59th in September and 63rd in May.
“This continues to show that the policy of relying on unreliable mobile ‘midband’ products does nothing for the consumers of Ireland,” said Eamonn Qallace of IrelandOffline.
“A system that cannot guarantee minimum speeds to consumers is not a suitable replacement for fixed ‘line’ broadband across the lesser served areas of the country.
“The only reasonable solution is a fibre-optic deployment and the lack of fibre-optic cables needs to be addressed urgently,” said Wallace.
The findings come just after Ryan’s announcement that 99pc of Ireland has broadband coverage.
