Irish telcos lag peers in mobile network coverage

Ireland’s next generation mobile network coverage is lagging the rest of the world, with the State ranking fifth worst, according to a new study.

Although Irish networks scored a middle of the table spot on broadband speed, with an average speed of 14Mbit/s for LTE connections in the final quarter of 2015, the data compiled by OpenSignal showed Ireland was ranked 64 out of 68 countries included in the survey in terms of coverage.

The UK came in at 55th place.

OpenSignal’s data looks at time coverage – the proportion of time users have an LTE signal – instead of solely geographical coverage. According to the report, Irish mobile users only have an LTE connection 44 per cent of the time, a ranking that is only above the Philippines, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Sri Lanka.

Of the Irish networks offering LTE, Vodafone users could expect to access an LTE network around 50 per cent of the time, while 3 and Meteor customers came in at 41 per cent.

When it came to network speeds, Singapore came out on top with 37 megabits per second (Mbit/s), compared with Ireland’s average of 14Mbit/s across the three networks, which put it in 32nd place. Vodafone and Meteor offered an average speed of 20Mbit/s, while 3 came in at 11Mbit/s in the survey.

“A year ago, an average 4G speed of 20 Mbps would have been a truly impressive feat, but today there are 15 countries and 52 individual networks that meet or exceed that mark,” OpenSignal said in the report.

The Irish networks were still ahead of their US counterparts in terms of speeds though, with the country ranking 55th overall.

OpenSignal compiled the data from almost 358,000 users of its app that measure network speeds.