The company responsible for delivering the Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) has said the project is "on time and on budget".
National Broadband Ireland (NBI) said 68,000 premises were connected to the high speed fibre network by the end of January - the close of its most recent contractual year.
It said this was above its forecast of 50,000.
Meanwhile, 217,000 premises were ready to connect, up on its target of 185,000.
NBI also said it has delivered on its target to connect 672 schools and 282 Broadband Connection Points in community locations in every county across the country.
"Ensuring that no-one is left behind in the provision of high-speed broadband under the National Broadband Plan, we are also reporting significant progress on our rollout to 27 offshore Islands with the network currently live on ten of those and engineering survey works commenced or complete on ten others," said Peter Hendrick, Chief Executive Officer of National Broadband Ireland.
"We are confident that all 227 Deployment Areas covered in our programme will be completed on time and on budget," he added.
The company's end of year report shows that almost 80% of the premises that have been identified as not having access to high speed broadband have now completed the survey and design stage of the programme.
Meanwhile, almost 70% of the premises have moved to or through construction, with over 40% now in the 'build complete' category.
"As Ireland’s new national fibre network, NBI was established with the vision to be the best open-access wholesale network operator in the world," said David McCourt, National Broadband Ireland Chairman.
"To achieve that goal, NBI has established all its operations to ensure it provides simple, seamless integration for Retail Service Providers (RSPs) to join the network and start selling services at scale to end-users, supporting the Government’s policy objective to ensure equal access to high-speed broadband for 100% of the population.
"In its successful execution of that vision, NBI has attracted 62 national and regional RSPs to sign up to sell broadband packages on its network, which has been achieved at a pace that is unprecedented in other markets around the world," he added.
Mr McCourt said this new "competitive market" will ensure that consumers benefit from a greater choice in the products they can purchase.
"With customer take-up approaching 50% within 18 months of the NBI network being live, the National Broadband Plan continues to deliver in line with the Government’s bold and ambitious policy objectives," he added.
