IRISH BROADBAND USERS are being routinely delivered slower internet connections than they are advertised, according to an official EU report.
A pan-continental study released by the European Commission has shown that the average Irish broadband connection offers download speeds that are only 84.7 per cent of the capacity a customer is actually paying for.
In terms of the actual speed versus the one advertised, this is the fifth-worst record of any of the EU member states.
Upload speeds are even worse, and average at only 72.5 per cent – the third-worst of any member state.
Ireland’s broadband connections also take longer to open popular websites during peak hours – with only one country, Cyprus, having a slightly longer wait.
Irish users connecting to Google, Facebook and YouTube had to want an average of 2.24 seconds for the pages to finish loading – even though those web companies make heavy use of Irish data centres, which should mean a quicker connection.
By comparison, users in the Netherlands waited only 1.05 seconds for the same pages to load.
The survey also found that Irish connections had the second-highest ‘jitter’ – where connections are subject to momentary lapses so that data speeds are inconsistent.
This means Irish users have slightly more difficulty in using voice-over-internet services like Skype. Only Italy has a higher jitter rate.
The data is not entirely negative, however: it showed that Ireland is slightly below the EU average in terms of packet loss – the rate at which small pieces of data are lost somewhere during a connection, corrupting the data being transferred.
Ireland also performed well in DNS failure rates, meaning it was relatively rare for a person’s broadband connection to have trouble identifying how exactly it should connect to the desired website.
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