The number of broadband users in the State rose in the past year, new data from the communications regulator shows, with an increase in fibre usage and a rise in the amount of data being used by consumers.
But the number of voice minutes showed further decline, and landlines were increasingly out of favour with consumers.
ComReg’s report for the first three months of the year showed the number of fixed broadband subscriber lines rose almost 3 per cent year on year to 1.66 million by the end of March.
According to the data, more than 712,000 lines were fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), about 43 per cent of total fixed broadband subscriber lines, a rise from the 33.1 per cent recorded in the first quarter of 2023.
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Average data use also rose, increasing 6.5 per cent to almost 432GB per month.
Almost half of those paying for fixed broadband in the first quarter of the year opted for speeds of more than 500Mbps, with only 12 per cent going for 1Gbps or faster.
At the same time, voice traffic was down almost 12 per cent compared to the first quarter of 2023, with mobile minutes outperforming fixed lines at 90 per cent of voice minutes. Looking at the average monthly figures, ComReg’s data showed a decline of more than 12 per cent in the number of minutes used by subscribers, at 135 minutes, while an average of 22 texts were sent and almost 14GB of data was used each month.
There were a total of 9.8 million mobile subscriptions in the Republic in the early months of the year, with the figures including mobile broadband and machine-to-machine subscriptions. The growth was driven by post-pay subscribers, while the number of 5G customers also rose year on year, up 40 per cent.
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