Ireland’s Broadband Performance Deteriorates Alarmingly Over The Summer

Ireland’s Broadband Performance Deteriorates Alarmingly Over The Summer

In May 2010 IrelandOffline issued shocking research(1) showing that Ireland was grossly under performing in terms of download speeds, upload speeds and overall quality. We were quite dismayed to find that not only was Ireland then in 41st position in the world for Download speeds and that Mongolia had leapt past us into 38th position. We also called on Minister Ryan to abandon the RTÉ studios,where he spends far too much of his time nowadays,and to return to his desk and thence to work. In any other developed country a steady fall into absolute mediocrity would trigger alarm bells and would precipitate firm government action in order to reverse the trend. However nothing has since been done to address these ongoing failings.

Since May 2010 we have dropped out of the Global Top 50 for download speeds and out of the Global Top 60 for upload speeds.

Ireland is now:

51st for Download Speeds (down from 41st in May)
70th for Upload Speeds (down from 63rd in May)
59th for Broadband Quality (up from 63rd in May)

Commenting on these results Eamonn Wallace Chairperson of IrelandOffline said:

“Global Investment inevitably follows quality infrastructure. We are paying a terrible cost for many years of complete policy failure by Minister Ryan and also by Comreg. Will you both please stop covering up for each other and do something about the low quality of Broadband in Ireland.”

IrelandOffline recommends that the advertising of blatantly false ‘up to’ speeds should be addressed immediately. This gross abuse of the English language is gravely distorting the market and with it these International figures. Many consumers and businesses are being locked into unfair long term contracts to supply to an ‘up to’ Xmbit package that is incapable of delivering anything of the sort given lack of capacity and congestion and distance. This shocking practice is evident in both the mobile and fixed line arenas.Furthermore, certain licenced providers are blocking normal legitimate traffic for no apparent reason other than to hide the lack of investment leading to congestion on their own networks.

By Immediate we mean in 2010 Minister, not when you get some consultants report you as requested sometime in 2012 containing something delusional you want to hear.

The pattern that is most obvious is that we are improving at a glacial pace or barely holding our own and that every other country is simply improving rapidly. We must drastically improve our performance and our political will simply in order to stand still.

Sadly the idea of catching up is seemingly beyond Minister Ryan and Comreg. We would dearly like to hear their strategies for standing still, if any.

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Notes

May press release http://irelandoffline.org/2010/05/what-are-the-mongolians-doing-right/

Download Speed http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

Upload Speed http://www.netindex.com/upload/allcountries/

Broadband Quality http://www.netindex.com/quality/allcountries/