Figures from the communications regulator show that the number of broadband customers continued to grow in the first quarter of this year, but voice traffic and revenue in the industry fell.
ComReg's quarterly report said there just over 1.27 million broadband subscribers at the end of March, up 28% from a year earlier and 6% from the previous quarter. But this has been driven mainly by mobile broadband subscriptions, which have almost doubled over a year with 90.6% growth.
When mobile is excluded broadband numbers were 13.9% up from a year earlier, while the quarterly growth rate was 2.9%.
Revenue in the communications market fell by more than 6% from the previous quarter to just over €1 billion. Revenue from fixed lines was down almost 3% in the three months, while mobile phone revenue dropped by more than 10%. ComReg says the amount of voice traffic on mobile phones dropped by 15.6% compared with the previous three months, though this was partly due to a correction in the way the figure is calculated.
The number of mobile phone subscriptions has fallen for the first time in four years and now stands at just over 4.9 million, down 2.4% on the previous quarter.
Eircom's share of fixed line revenue has crept up to 69.1% in the three months, though this is still below the same period last year.
Price figures show that Ireland was rated 16th of 19 countries for the price of national residential phone calls (19th being the dearest), but sixth for national business calls.
