Average broadband speeds continued to increase in Ireland through the first quarter of 2016, according to a new report issued by the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).

Fixed broadband subscriptions from January to March increased by 4%, while mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 0.4% since Q1 2015. Fixed household broadband penetration is 67%.

ComReg said that the estimated household total (fixed and mobile) broadband penetration rate at the end of Q1 was 83%, higher than the EU average of 80%.

Average speed for broadband continued to increase. For fixed broadband speeds, 58.1% of subscriptions were equal to or greater than 30Mbps in Q1 2016, compared with 48.1% for Q1 2015.

Other ComReg trends showed that consumers continued to show a strong preference for buying their communications services as bundled subscriptions, with 61.2% of all fixed subscriptions sold in a bundle as of Q1 2016.

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Consumers also continued to consume more data, with mobile data traffic volumes increasing in Q1 2016, while voice minutes, MMS and SMS traffic volumes decreased. The total number of SMS messages sent by mobile users in Ireland was over 1.49 billion in Q1 2016, down 16.1% on Q1 2015 and down by 6.9% since Q4 2015.

In Q1 2016, mobile average revenue per user (ARPU) was €24.12, compared with €24.79 in Q1 2015.