ComReg today released its Quarterly Key Data Report on the Electronic Communications market for the period (1 October to 31 December), Q4 2021.
Fixed broadband subscriptions increased to 1.58 million, a 0.7% increase this quarter and an increase of 4.0% compared to Q4 2020. Of these, over 372k were fibre-to the-premises (FTTP) subscriptions representing 23.6% of total fixed broadband subscriptions in Q4 2021, up from 16.4% in Q4 2020.
According to Eurostat, Ireland’s household broadband penetration rate (including fixed and mobile broadband) in 2021 was at 93%, which is higher than the EU average of 90%.
On a monthly basis an average fixed residential broadband subscriber used 349.3 GB of data, a decrease of 3.1% since Q4 2020.
In Q4 2021, approximately 86.8% of broadband subscribers had purchased broadband with speeds equal to or greater than 30Mbps. Of all fixed broadband subscriptions 50.1% of subscribers purchased broadband speeds equal to or greater than 100Mbps.
Total voice traffic minutes increased by 0.2% this quarter, being 4.9% lower than in Q4 2020. Mobile minutes form the majority of voice minutes at 87.1%, with fixed minutes representing the remaining 12.9%. Mobile voice minutes decreased by 0.4% this quarter, while fixed voice minutes decreased by 1.1%.
On a monthly basis an average mobile voice subscriber used 213 minutes (-1.0% annual decrease) and sent 43 texts (6.8% annual increase).
Total mobile subscriptions (including mobile broadband and machine-to-machine (M2M)) increased to 7.89 million in Q4 2021 – driven by a rise in post pay subscriptions which now represent over 69% of all mobile subscriptions. Increases in M2M & MBB subscriptions also contributed. 5G subscribers totalled 392k in Q4.
M2M subscriptions increased to 2.18 million, a 38.2% annual increase and made up 27.5% of all mobile subscriptions in Q4 2021.
The Quarterly Key Data Report for Q4 2021 is available in the Publications Section. 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/
