Labour spokesperson on communications, marine and natural resources, Tommy Broughan, TD has called on Minister Noel Dempsey to make broadband his number one priority for 2006. Broughan argues that based on regulator Comreg’s latest broadband figures, radical and urgent action is required to address Ireland’s broadband deficit.
Comreg figures show that there are now approximately 208,500 broadband subscribers in Ireland as of September 2005. This is up from around 175,000 subscribers in the middle of last year but Broughan believes that, at this rate, it is highly unlikely the government’s target of 400,000 subscribers before the end of 2006 would be reached. Broughan said “Ireland still has a total penetration rate of just 4.3% across all types of broadband access.
We are ranked 15th out of 20 in the most recent OECD broadband league tables, just slightly ahead of Greece, Poland, and Czech and Slovak republics.” Broughan claims that we are falling further and further behind a moving target as the 2005 World Knowledge Competitiveness Index showed that broadband speeds of 100Mb/s are now the norm in Japan, South Korea and the top performing EU countries.
Meanwhile, leading DSL broadband supplier Eircom announced at the end of December that it had 200,000 broadband subscribers and that it was on target to reach 500,000 by December 2007. In January wireless provider Irish Broadband claimed that it had attracted 20,000 subscribers since launch.
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