Ireland has made significant progress in improving levels of broadband coverage and take-up in the last two years, however we are still behind competitor countries in terms of rolling out high speed next generation networks (NGN), according to a new broadband benchmarking report published by Forfás today.

Broadband connections now account for 90 percent of internet connections, compared to 58 percent in Q1 2007, which represents a significant transition from dial-up. Ireland has 21.4 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants compared to the OECD average of 22.4 (excluding mobile broadband and leading countries such as the Netherlands (38.1) and Denmark (37).

The download speeds available in Ireland are greatly improved on recent years, but remain below the fastest speeds available to customers in other OECD countries. In Ireland 0.6 percent of total broadband connections are fibre connections. This compares to 11.3 percent of subscribers on average in OECD-28 countries.

Further documentation about Ireland's Broadband Performance and policy actions are available at: http://www.forfas.ie/publications/2010/title,5376,en.php