IRELAND RANKS 20th out of a table of 30 OECD nations for households with broadband access in 2008, with almost 43 per cent using the high-speed internet connection.

Businesses fare better, with more than 95 per cent of companies having 10-49 employees with high-speed broadband access; the figure is from 99.2 per cent upwards for larger firms.

Ireland has a total of 950,082 broadband subscribers, as of June this year, according to the report.

In the Dáil in November, Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan said more than 65 per cent of households were now connected to broadband. The OECD figures do not include mobile broadband delivered over 3G telephone networks. The OECD includes households with DSL, cable, fibre, and wireless connections with speeds faster than 256 kbit/sec to end users.

DSL connections are the most common in Ireland, the study found, with few fibre/LAN customers and only a small number of wireless subscribers.

In the wider 30-country OECD region, DSL remains the most popular technology, with 60 per cent of connections. This is followed by cable at 29 per cent, and fibre and local area networks with 9 per cent. Average prices for broadband access in Ireland remain among the highest in the OECD area, while advertised speeds were among the slowest when the survey was carried out, the report found.