There have been a couple of posts recently on the sad state of broadband in Ireland – specifically these posts from Sean McNamara and Damien .
I’m on a 3mb dsl connection. And that is one of the faster connections it is possible to get in this country! That costs me €40 per month plus 21% vat.
In the report that Sean links to we see that
The cost [of broadband] in all of the top 10 countries averages less than $5 per month/megabit.
$5 per mb per month – that’s less than €4 per mb per month. I’m paying over €13 per mb per month (not including vat) and even then, I can only get 3mb. If I want any more than that I need all six numbers in the lotto.
Ireland is an island nation – it looks like the current administration are determined to see that we remain cut off from the rest of the world, the modern equivalent of De Valera‘s isolationist policies.
Hey Tom thanks for the mention,
I have to say I agree with you. Even with your 3mb connection, are you getting the full 3mb? Broadband seriously needs to improve in this country but there just isn’t enough competitive pricing for ISP’s to make speeds to go up yet, in my opinion. We need more broadband companies! Or we could all strike, but I don’t see that happening! 😛
I’m on 6Mb connection speed from NTL (with speeds reaching about 10Mb at night) and that suits me well. When I came here more than 2 years ago I was living about 40 km from Dublin – the only internet connection was dial-up and not even getting the highest speed. I was just shocked about the broadband availability here. I used to work for one of the biggest ISPs in here and I’m not sure if it’s good for the market to have new competitors as the whole infrastructure (fibres and phone lines) belongs to 2 or 3 companies and nothing’s going to change that.