Mongolia beating Ireland on broadband speeds

Ireland's broadband speeds continue to compare badly with international standards.

A new global survey from test company Ookla show that the average download speed in Ireland is 6mbits. Most EU countries are averaging well over 10mbits.

Ireland comes 41st on the download index, which is headed by South Korea and Latvia. The country only manages 60% of the EU average download speed performance with Spain, Italy, Malta and Cyprus now the only EU 27 states that fare worse than Ireland.

The upload speed figure is even worse with Ireland scraping in at 61st on this ranking as it only manages 40% of the EU average (1 mbit upload compared to 2.5mbits across the European Union). Only Greece, Spain, Italy the UK and Cyprus saw a worse performance.

Ireland comes in 65th position on the quality list, with countries with better quality broadband including every other EU country and the three poorest countries in Europe - Serbia, Albania and Moldova. Russia tops the list, followed by Romania and Portugal.

In conducting this survey Ooka carried out 1.5 billion individual broadband tests globally. 800,000 were carried out in Ireland and were conduced by the end user from their own computer or smartphone.

'Importantly these results include recent market developments,' commented Ireland Offline Chairman Eamonn Wallace.

After upgrades from the likes of Eircom and UPC, Mr Wallace says that Ireland has still fallen behind the likes of Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Greece as well as Mongolia.