Only Iceland, Denmark and Luxembourg have more expensive broadband services than Ireland. The report found that about half of OECD countries sell broadband for less than €30 a month. In Iceland a standard broadband package for a home user costs €48 a month, compared to €47 in Denmark, €46 inLuxembourg and €40 in Ireland - the price of Eircom's broadband product for home users.
The cheapest country for broadband was Korea, which charged €13 a month for a 2.5 megabits per second connection. The second cheapest country was France, which charged €15 per month, followed by the Netherlands, which charged €20 monthly. A standard broadband package in Britain costs €27 a month, according to the study. Eircom and Esat BT announced last week that they were doubling the speed of their standard broadband packages from 512 kilobits per second to 1 megabit from April. However, Damien Mulley, chairman of Ireland Offline, said the changes would have no impact on Ireland's ranking. “Unless prices start coming down, Ireland could find itself slipping even lower. Being the fourth most expensive, we don't have much further to go,” he said.
A spokesman for Ireland Offline said that Eircom's announcement was good news for people who could receive broadband over their phone lines. However, more than 20 per cent of people that are connected to broadband-enabled exchanges still fail minimum line quality standards.
“This is an extraordinarily high figure when you compare it to the likes of Britain and the North, where the number of lines failing the test is less than 1 per cent,’'he said.
“The announcement [of faster broadband speed] will ring hollow for the tens of thousands that are unable to take advantage of any service.”