Irish Broadband Penetration Reaches 83% of Internet Users

I just did some trending on Broadband a bug bear of mine. Why? Well, people keep telling me there’s a broadband penetration problem in Ireland, and on the radio at least, they keep interviewing someone living well out of reach of roads, never mind a broadband connection. Everyone I know has access to broadband, so, it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t stack up. And, it turns out, it doesn’t stack up. It’s simply wrong.

The reason is the research is concentrating on home broadband connections and not home and work and school/university and café’s and the like, people were being given a false and damaging impression of Internet use and penetration in Ireland. The reason for this is the research is done by the traditional door to door method, from traditional research companies. It’s all they can count with the method. For the background to the discussion see my old post, Broadband by Any Other Name Would Work as Fast. My point is simply that in a time of increasingly mobile Internet use, the use of ‘any broadband connection’ is broadband use, and ‘at-home’ broadband, isn’t the point.

As I said, I did some trending, including the latest Net Behaviour Report data, Wave I 2008 and the findings are fantastic, and make a whole lot of sense. Pay special attention to the last column.



In 2007, 83% of Irish Internet users reported that they had access to broadband, and they used it. In 2008, this is 86%, and if we trend this out to 2011, it’s 95%. At home broadband is also growing, according to broadband users. So, 83% of 2 million, means that 1.66 Million Irish Internet users, access the web at broadband speed, from various locations. Good news.

But why, when I ask 1600 Internet users what their Internet connection speeds are like do many more of them tell me they have broadband connection than are reported in the mainstream media? Why, when I trend this on a 3000 sample, with sampling points over 2 years, is the news so good in the long term?

Well, I could bore you with 20 reasons, and get passionate about the whole thing. But, the statistician and researcher in me tells me not to be too defensive. To take the data as it is presented by the sample, interrogate its validity, and once it passes the tests, acknowledge its statistical truth. This is what they said. These findings are significant. It’s not only true for my sample, its true for the population. Job done.

Common sense told me there’s loads of broadband access out there for those that want it, and that everyone who needs it, can get it, and they do. The stats back this up. There is no broadband problem in Ireland. There’s a measurement and perception one however.

There’s also a need to push the debate along. Most broadband in Ireland is painfully slow. Many ‘free’ broadband packages give not much more than 1mbs. This works, but you couldn’t, for example, watch a video on YouTube. Here, at work we’re using 16mbs, which is as fast as it gets in Ireland, more or less, and we can do what we need to do. At home I use 3G 3.6mbs, which, again, does the job, but its so much slower. 1mbs means that big pages will make the browser time out. Big mails will also time out, especially if you’re using webmail. Many people use the Internet to send or upload pictures, and 1mps precludes this use for anything over a 3mg attachment.

So yes, we have broadband, but for most, no, it’s not quick enough. So, let’s move on the debate, and concentrate on what’s really at issue. Not just any broadband at home, but good broadband wherever you can get it.