The latest OECD broadband league shows that Ireland is 23rd with a 12.5% penetration rate.
This still lags behind the 16.9% average for the 30 member countries and the EU 15 average of 18.6%.
The report shows that the UK now has a 21.6% broadband rate and in France there are 20.3 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.
However, the report shows that we made progress last year as in December 2005 Ireland had a broadband penetration rate of just 6.7%.
The figures show that Ireland had bigger broadband growth rates than every other EU country last year, with 517,300 subscribers in December 2006.
The strongest growth over the last year comes from Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand, with each country adding over 5.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants in 2006.
Denmark and the Netherlands are the first two countries in the OECD to surpass 30% broadband penetration rate and US broadband subscribers now represent 29% of all connections in the OECD with 58.1m subscribers.
Lobby group, Ireland Offline, today welcomed the new figures but warned that more needs to be done to bring broadband to everyone that wants it.
Chairman, Damien Mulley said : 'The OECD statistics prove without doubt that there is massive demand for broadband in Ireland and if the 25% of the population who cannot get broadband were offered it in the morning, we'd see Ireland going from 23rd place in the OECD statistics (same position as last year) to a midpoint and possibly even towards the top of the tables.'
He said a Government tender needs to be announced for the supply of broadband to parts of the country that cannot access it.
He also called for a timeframe for all eircom exchanges to be enabled, more progress on local loop unbundling - which is the opening of eircom's lines to its competitors, despite some leeway being offered by eircom, and better regulation of the industry.
