Ireland is among the cheapest European countries for mobile bills but still ranks as too expensive for home broadband, Ireland’s telecoms watchdog has found.
Comreg says that the average monthly mobile bill fell to €24.32, the first time it has sunk below €25 per month in Ireland.
The watchdog’s latest report confirms that Ireland remains among the cheapest countries in Europe for mobile users. Prepaid monthly bills here cost an average €9.21.
While the UK is marginally cheaper at €8.35, Ireland’s prepaid cost is half the cost of the Netherlands (€19.04) and
less than half that of Spain (€22.22).
Meanwhile, non-business monthly contracts here average out at €16.50 per month, which is cheaper than most European countries.
The Comreg report found that landline calls in Ireland remain among the most expensive in Europe, coming in at €32.47 per month compared
to €20.23 per month in Denmark.
Despite this, landline voice services still bring in almost twice as much revenue (€163.4m) to operators as landline broadband services (€92.8m).
The figures show that there has been a surge (43pc) in ‘efibre’ broadband connections and declines for regular phone line (-15pc) and Virgin cable (-2.1pc) broadband.
Vodafone and Sky have gained market share, while Eir and Virgin have slipped, according to the report.
Eir still dominates the landline market in Ireland with 48pc of all revenues compared to 12.5pc for BT, 10.9pc for Virgin and 9.4pc for Vodafone.
However, Sky has jumped from 3pc to 10pc of the fixed voice telephony market in the last three years.
There are still 1.15m copper landline subscriptions in Ireland, down 2.5pc on the same time last year.
Elsewhere, the report found that broadcasting retail revenues fell by 15.3pc to €33.5m over the last 12 months, the second biggest annual decline in recent years.
And the number of wifi hotspots in Ireland has collapsed, down by 73pc compared to last year.
The biggest provider, Bitbuzz, was acquired by Virgin Media in 2015.
Vodafone remains the biggest mobile operator in Ireland, although its market share declined from 38.2pc to 36.8pc in the last year.
Three gained slightly (to 32.6pc) and Tesco Mobile also gained (to 7.3pc). Meteor fall slightly (to 20.2pc).
Despite falling market share, Vodafone has held its revenue share over the last two years taking 42.4pc of the market, according to the figures.
In the same period, Meteor gained slightly (18.5pc) while Three fell from 35.7pc to 33.8pc.
Overall fixed line revenues increased by 3.8pc over the last year to €348m, although mobile retail revenues fell by 0.4pc to €386m.
The total retail market revenues were up slightly to €768.5m.
SMS texting volumes continue to collapse, down by almost half over the last three years. In the same period, volumes of mobile data have risen 500pc.
Article Source: http://tinyurl.com/kbwqb42
