Irish broadband services are still failing to reach their advertised top speeds, a new report has found, with some services performing poorly in popular applications such as online gaming and peer-to-peer file sharing.
A study carried out by Epitiro, which has monitored internet service providers in the UK since 2003, has found that consumers using fixed line broadband services in Ireland's major cities get an average of 60.2 per cent of advertised bandwidth speed, while mobile broadband services reach 64 per cent.
The report tested services in Dublin, Limerick, Galway and Cork provided by fixed line providers BT Ireland, Digiweb, Eircom, Imagine, Smart Telecom and Perlico, with the three mobile broadband providers Vodafone, 3 Ireland and O2 also tested.
The broadband report named Smart Telecom as the top ISP, which reached 76 per cent of its advertised speed. BT Ireland and Digiweb completed the top three. Smart's top ranking was determined by a number of criteria, including achieved speeds, non-cached HTTP download speed, ping time, DNS lookup time and packet loss.
Ping time, which assesses the responsiveness of a broadband connection, is particularly important for online gaming, with a recommended 100 milliseconds as a ceiling. The report found that all the ISPs failed to meet this standard, with the average ping time for Ireland at 194 milliseconds.
Mobile broadband performed particularly badly in this test, with ping times ranging from 251 milliseconds with O2's 3G service, to 391 milliseconds with Vodafone. This makes it "highly undesirable" in relation to mobile gaming, although concern was expressed about gaming capabilities in general.
Customers who opt for higher speed lines may not be in a better position, the report found, with faster services failing to deliver equally faster web browsing speeds. In one instance, a 24MB line performed only 25 per cent better than a 3MB service.
Peak times may exacerbate the problem, the report said, with some ISPs offering the higher-speed lines struggling to meet more than 50 per cent of advertised speeds.
Mobile 3G services were found to be the slowest for web surfing.
Meanwhile, the Labour party has expressed concern that the issue of broadband in rural areas will become a "political football".
Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan confirmed yesterday that the rollout of the National Broadband Scheme, which is aimed at bringing broadband to currently unserved areas of the country, would be conducted according to electoral areas.
"There is a real danger that broadband will now become a political football, taking away from the urgent need of rural areas that cannot access broadband," said Labour Party communications spokeswoman Liz Mcmanus.
"This Government is clearly not taking the broadband issue seriously. We are already lagging behind the EU average.
Today a survey found that those who can access broadband are finding that they are only getting on average 62 per cent of advertised broadband speed. Now it seems the much anticipated National Broadband Scheme is in danger of being mismanaged and subject to political influences."
Last week, the Minister announced that the service provider '3' had been chosen as the preferred tenderer for the National Broadband Scheme.
Meanwhile Minister for the Information Society Seán Power today attended a meeting with his European counterparts at an E-Inclusion conference in Vienna.
The purpose of the conference was to report on the progress being made towards reaching the Information Society Declaration signed at Riga in 2006 and to share ideas and information for the development of an E-inclusive society across Europe.
Mr Power said: "In common with other European countries we recognise the vital importance of Next Generation Broadband and the central part it will play in developing Ireland as an information society and an information economy."
