The number of people subscribing to Irish broadband services grew faster than expected over the summer months, boosted by increased advertising and the rollout of more wireless services, communications regulator ComReg said.

According to the latest quarterly report by ComReg, there were 372,200 broadband subscribers at the end of June - representing 39 per cent of total internet subscribers.

This number increased to 410,000 by the end of August, according to Isolde Goggin, ComReg's chairwoman, who cited improved advertising as the most likely reason behind the increase.

The summer is usually quieter than the rest of the year.

At 10 per cent, broadband penetration in Ireland remains below the EU average. However, ComReg said it expected this to increase as advertising raised awareness of different services and increased competition brought down prices. The growth rate stands at more than 100 per cent a year.

During the period, Eircom's dominance of the fixed-line broadband market continued to decline, with new offerings tempting subscribers away from the incumbent. Eircom now accounts for about 52 per cent of connections, compared with 61 per cent this time last year.

"It was very encouraging to see a surge in activity by many companies offering broadband over the last six months, which has resulted in an increase in broadband take-up by businesses and consumers," said Ms Goggin.

As well as analysing the internet market, ComReg's report also found that there were 4.3 million active mobile phone subscriptions in Ireland at the end of June, with a penetration rate of 103 per cent based on the number of working SIM cards.

Irish consumers sent almost 1.5 billion text messages in the quarter - an average of 114 messages per subscriber each month.