BROADBAND subscriptions accelerated in Ireland in the final three months of 2009, but overall revenues in the Irish communications market continued to fall.
The latest report from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) shows that overall market revenues declined by 2.3 per cent to €974 million in the quarter.
Total annual revenues for 2009 clocked in about €4.03 billion, compared to €4.51 billion in 2008 – a drop of 10.6 per cent, according to ComReg.
The total amount of minutes spent on voice calls by Irish residents increased 1.4 per cent to more than 4.8 billion minutes.
The increase was driven by a 3.3 per cent increase in mobile voice calls, with voice calls on fixed lines decreasing 1.1 per cent during the quarter. However, mobile firms failed to cash in on the rise in usage, with revenues from mobile services falling 2.4 per cent.
ComReg said this suggested that consumers may be benefiting from bigger bundles of mobile call minutes and discounted tariffs.
Total internet subscriptions increased to 1,571,039 during the quarter. Narrowband subscriptions fell 18.3 per cent to 127,689 as more consumers made the switch to broadband. Broadband subscriptions rose 6 per cent to 1,443,350.
The broadband penetration rate in Ireland, including the use of mobile broadband services, now stands at 32.4 per cent, up from 30.5 per cent in the previous quarter. The fixed broadband penetration rate, excluding mobile broadband, reached 21.9 per cent.
Only 6 per cent of broadband subscribers have access to speeds in excess of 10 MB per second, ComReg said.
Revenues in the communications market have been in decline since mid-2008. Ronan Lupton, chairman of the association for Alternative Operators in the Communications Market (Alto), said the decline in revenues during the quarter was “more to do with Eircom’s overwhelming dominance” in the market than the recession.
Eircom was being “exceptionally aggressive” in its campaign to win back customers who had switched to other operators, Mr Lupton said.
ComReg included a note on social networking trends.
The regulator indicated telecoms network providers were under pressure to upgrade their networks to cope with bandwidth-intensive social networking applications, yet the network providers derived little or no revenue from the popularity of social networking activities.
