Half of all mobile users now on 4G as fixed broadband subscriptions rise

Half of all mobile subscribers in the Republic are now using 4G, according to new figures from ComReg, which also show a sharp rise in the volume of data used.

The latest figures shows smartphone owners are sending significantly fewer texts and speaking less regularly on their phones than previously. But, the rise in data usage has been a boon to mobile operators with combined retail revenues rising 2 per cent versus the third quarter in 2017 to €395.4 million.

At the end of September there were 6.3 million mobile subscriptions in the Republic, up 1.89 per cent compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

Vodafone continued to have the lion's share of contract customers with 65.9 per cent of subscriptions. It was followed by Three, Eir and Tesco.

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The total number of SMS messages sent by Irish mobile users was over 1.09 billion in the third quarter, down 9.7 per cent versus the same period last year as consumers increased their usage of services such as WhatsApp.

According to ComReg, the total number of broadband subscriptions stood at 1.72 million at the end of the third quarter of 2018.

The data show fixed broadband subscriptions rose by 0.4 per cent to 1.4 million, up 2 per cent on an annual basis, pushing up the overall fixed household penetration rate to 68.3 per cent. The combined fixed and mobile penetration rate is 88 per cent, up 21 percentage points since 2013 and 3 per cent higher than the EU average.

Eir had 32.3 per cent of total fixed broadband subscriptions, followed by Virgin Media at 26.5 per cent, Vodafone at 18.3 per cent (excluding mobile broadband subscriptions), and Sky Ireland with a 13.4 per cent market share.

Fixed broadband speeds increased over the year with 86.5 per cent of all subscriptions equal to or greater than 10Mbps.Just under 76 per cent of fixed broadband subscriptions had speeds of up to or beyond 30Mbps, up from 70.5 per cent for the same period in 2017.

Overall industry retail revenues for the third quarter totalled €881.4 million, up 1 per cent on the priod quarter but unchanged from the same period a year ago.