We don't use landlines or phoneboxes anymore
FEW Irish people are using landlines and public payphones, a new EU survey has shown. More than three-quarters of Irish people say they never use public payphones, close to the European average.
Elsewhere, about one-third of Austrians and Spaniards still use payphones, compared with just 3pc of Cypriots and 4pc of Finns.
Landlines are also falling out of favour, with about one-quarter of Europeans reporting they use just mobiles. Some 69pc of Irish homes have both a landline and a mobile, 20pc have a mobile jonly and 9pc have a landline only.
In Finland and the Czech Republic up to two-thirds of homes have a mobile phone but no landline. The prevalence of computers and access to the internet in Ireland is on a par with other European countries. Some 58pc of Irish households have at least one computer and 49pc have internet access.
BROADBAND
However, just 20pc of Irish homes have broadband access, compared with 36pc across the EU. Irish homes are more likely to have dial-up access (22pc), which is slower, than the rest of Europe (10pc). The internet penetration rate in Ireland has increased from 36pc at the beginning of 2006 to 49pc at the end of 2007. Use of broadband internet access has jumped from 7pc to 20pc over the same period. One-fifth of Irish respondents said they were dissatisfied with the performance of their internet connection.
While most of us have computers, we make less use of them than other Europeans. In Lithuania 58pc of homes with internet access use their computer to make phone calls, while in Ireland the figure is 13pc.
