3. Broadband scorecard

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Improving, but could do better. Ireland ’s broadband scorecard is showing an improvement but it has some distance to go to match the top performers internationally. High-quality, affordable broadband is essential to stimulating economic activity, specifically to creating jobs, earning export revenues, attracting foreign direct investment and supporting regional development.

A new report from Forfás aggregates all the international benchmarking data for broadband and shows how Ireland stacks up against its international competitors. The result is mixed. There have been improvements in the speed and the cost of broadband offerings, with coverage and take-up rates converging to the OECD average. The latest ComReg data shows 1.36 million subscriptions.

But, Forfás warns, Ireland is at least three to five years behind competitor countries in term of rolling out the infrastructure to deliver high speed, next generation broadband. In Ireland only 0.6% of connections are fibre, compared with 21% for Sweden , a whopping 51% for Japan and an OECD-28 average of 11.3%.

Scorecard sources:

1. Take up – OECD, June 2009 (based on 30 OECD countries)
2. Fibre connections – OECD, June 2009 (based on 28 OECD countries)
3. Speed – Forfás Ireland ’s Broadband Performance and Policy Actions January 2010 (based on 24 EU countries)
4. Cost – Forfás Ireland ’s Broadband Performance and Policy Actions January 2010 (based on 19 OECD countries)
5. ComReg Quarterly Key Data Report, December 2009

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