Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Question 16: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the average broadband speeds available to residential and business customers in towns of less than 10,000 persons and in the open countryside; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35830/12]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Statistics on broadband availability in Ireland, in the format requested by the Deputy, are not available.

Statutory authority to require statistical information from individual service providers, operating in the fully liberalised telecommunications market, is vested in the independent market regulator, the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).

ComReg, publishes quarterly statistical reports which include information on market developments in contracted broadband speeds in an aggregated and anonymous form at the national level. I have no statutory basis to request the more detailed statistical returns submitted by individual service providers which could include commercially sensitive information. My Department can only access the information published by ComReg.

The ComReg published quarterly statistical reports, can be accessed on its website www.comreg.ie .

I can however advise the Deputy of the position as advised by industry in the Report of the Next Generation Broadband Taskforce Report. That report states that 35% of the population (600,000 households) already have access to speeds of 100Mbps via cable. From 2015 over 50% of the population (900,000 households) will have access to speeds of 70Mpbs and above, with 41% having access to speeds of 100Mpbs via cable. Fixed wireless services of 30Mbps are currently available to 500,000 homes, including approximately 80,000 outside of the cable footprint. In the areas not served by cable, consumers generally have access to headline speeds of between 3Mpbs and 24Mbps (depending on the area) through fixed line, mobile and satellite services, with fixed wireless providing higher speeds in some areas.

Larger commercial customers generally have access to the high speeds they require and the Taskforce did not identify this as an area of particular concern. Affordable access to higher speeds may however be problematic for smaller businesses and companies who wish to provide eWorking facilities for employees.

The most recent report published by ComReg is for the quarter to the end March 2012. It reports that the number of customers contracting for broadband service is continuing to increase year on year, increasing from 1.64 million in Q1 2011 to more than 1.66 million.

It also reports that customers are moving from lower to higher broadband speeds. The proportion of customers contracted at speeds of 2 Mbps or less has fallen to less than 6% from 14% in Q1 2010; the proportion of customers contracted in a range between 2 Mbps and 10 Mbps was 75% at end Q1 2012 and the proportion of customers contracted at speed exceeding 10 Mbps increased from 7% in Q1 2010 to 19% at the end of Q1 2012. In addition to its published statistical reports, ComReg also operates a customer Information service, accessible at www.callcosts.ie , which allows users to identify marketed broadband services by county and also allows users to compare the costs of home phone, broadband, mobile and combined packages. However, this facility identifies marketed broadband speeds at the county level only and would not facilitate the collection of data in the form requested.