The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) today released its Quarterly Key Data Report on the Electronic Communications market for the period (1 October to 31 December), Q4 2023.
Fixed broadband subscriber lines increased to 1.65 million, a 0.8% increase this quarter and an increase of 2.7% compared to Q4 2022. Of these, nearly 668,000 were fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) subscriber lines representing 40.4% of total fixed broadband subscriber lines in Q4 2023, up from 31.1% in Q4 2022. FTTP is the most commonly purchased broadband technology and is available at 62% of all premises (as measured by Eircodes) in Ireland. FTTP and/or Cable broadband is available at 75% of all premises (as measured by Eircodes) in Ireland.
On a monthly basis an average residential fixed broadband subscriber line used 445.1 GB of data, an increase of 7.8% since Q4 2022.
In Q4 2023, approximately 44% of fixed broadband subscriber lines had purchased broadband with speeds equal to or greater than 500Mbps, with 11.3% purchasing broadband speeds equal to or greater than 1Gbps. Of the 667,711 FTTP subscriber lines, over 80% have broadband speeds equal to or greater than 500 Mbps.
Total voice traffic minutes decreased by 7.8% this quarter, being 30% lower than in Q4 2022. Mobile minutes form the majority of voice minutes at 89%, with fixed minutes representing the remaining 11%.
On a monthly basis an average mobile voice subscriber used 132 minutes (4.7% annual decrease), sent 31 texts (18.1% annual decrease), and used 13.9GB of data (3.8% annual increase).
Total mobile subscriptions (including mobile broadband and machine-to-machine (M2M)) increased to 9.7 million in Q4 2023 – driven by a rise in post pay subscriptions which now represent 75% of all mobile subscriptions. 5G subscribers increased to 1.5 million in Q4 2023, an increase of 53% since Q4 2022.
M2M subscriptions increased to 3.5 million, a 26% annual increase and made up 37% of all mobile subscriptions in Q4 2023.
The Quarterly Key Data Report for Q4 2023 (ComReg 24/19) is available on the ComReg website www.comreg.ie/publications. The data portal which contains the full set of data and associated charts is available on https://www.comreg.ie/industry/electronic-communications/data-portal/
