Home and business owners signing up to fixed-broadband has risen

Sun, 16 Mar, 2025 - 15:51

Sarah Slater

Home and business owners signing up to fixed-broadband has risen, an industry watchdog has found.

The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) in its key data report on the Electronic Communications market for the last three months of 2024 shows that fixed broadband subscriber lines increased to 1.69 million, an increase of 2.4 per cent compared to the same period in 2023.

Of these, over 867,052 were fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) subscriber lines representing 51 per cent of total fixed broadband subscriber lines at the end of last year, up from 40.4 per cent for the same period in 2023.

ComReg also published an Open Data Map Hub with an interactive application to show Coverage and Take-Up of Gigabit Broadband (FTTP and Cable) by county across Ireland.

FTTP is the most purchased broadband technology and is available at 74 per cent of all premises in Ireland. Gigabit broadband is available at 85 per cent of all premises in Ireland.

In terms of premises take up, 49 per cent of all premises had an active service at the end of 2024.

The county with the highest level of such coverage is Laois at 92 per cent, Longford has the highest level of Gigabit coverage at 93 per cent. Leitrim has the fastest growing coverage within the last year, with an increase of 35 per cent compared to 2023.

Every month, an average residential fixed broadband subscriber line used 506.75 GB of data, an increase of 14 per cent since 2023.

Businesses have used 343.55 GB of data, an increase of 24 per cent compared to 2023.

At the end of 2024, approximately 65.5 per cent of fixed broadband subscriber lines had purchased broadband with speeds equal to or greater than 500Mbps, up from 44 per cent in 2023 with 18 per cent purchasing broadband speeds equal to or greater than 1Gbps.

Total mobile subscriptions (including mobile broadband and machine-to-machine (M2M)) increased to 10.3 million in 2024 – driven by a rise in bill pay subscriptions which represent 76 per cent of all mobile subscriptions. 5G subscribers increased to 1.99 million, an increase of 28 per cent since 2023.