Ireland coverage

What the Ireland numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 61 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 16 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Ireland when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Vodafone and Three. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Ireland

• Three Ireland: Three had the largest mobile base in the second quarter of 2026 with 50.2 percent of all subscriptions once mobile broadband and machine to machine SIMs are counted, but only 27.7 percent of voice subscriptions.
• Vodafone Ireland: Vodafone led voice subscriptions in the second quarter of 2026 with 31.8 percent, excluding mobile broadband and machine to machine lines. Counting every subscription, its share was 26.3 percent.
• Eir: Eir held 24.9 percent of voice subscriptions and 14.6 percent of all mobile subscriptions in the second quarter of 2026, the third of Ireland's three network operators.
• Brands on the big networks: GoMo and Lyca Mobile run on the Eir network, while Clear Mobile and An Post Mobile use Vodafone's, so each brand follows its host network's technology changes, including 3G retirement.
• Smaller brands: Tesco Mobile held 8.1 percent of voice subscriptions in the second quarter of 2026, ahead of Lyca Mobile and Virgin Mobile at 2.5 percent each, Sky Mobile at 1.7 percent and An Post Mobile at 0.9 percent.
• Market size: Ireland counted 11,028,477 mobile subscriptions at the end of June 2026. Of those, 4,481,995 were machine to machine connections and 394,453 mobile broadband, leaving 6,152,029 voice subscriptions.

Older networks in Ireland

• Vodafone switched off its 3G network in October 2024, which also ended 3G for Clear Mobile and An Post Mobile customers who use the Vodafone network.
• Eir is switching off its 3G network in phases from October 2026 and contacting customers who rely on 3G only services. The change also retires 3G for GoMo and Lyca Mobile, which run on the Eir network.
• Donegal is the first county to lose Eir's 3G, on 1 October 2026, with the other counties following in phases. Eir says calls and texts keep working for all its customers, and options for affected users include new settings, a free SIM or a compatible device.
• Where 3G is retired, phones that support only 2G and 3G still make calls over 2G, but mobile data drops to much slower 2G speeds. A 4G or 5G phone is not affected.

5G in Ireland

• Vodafone launched Ireland's first commercial 5G network on 13 August 2019, in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford, using Ericsson equipment.
• ComReg's 2017 auction assigned all 350 MHz of the 3.6 GHz band to five winners for about 78 million euros, with licences running to 31 July 2032. Three won 100 MHz nationally, Vodafone 105 MHz in the cities and Meteor, part of the Eircom group, 85 MHz in the cities.
• The Multi Band Spectrum Award ended on 14 December 2022 with Eir, Imagine, Three and Vodafone winning spectrum in the 700 MHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands, paying about 448 million euros for rights that run until 13 February 2042.
• ComReg said the 2022 award raised the spectrum available for fixed and mobile services by 46 percent, and described the bands as suited to 5G and to widespread mobile coverage.
• Three became the first Irish operator to launch 5G Standalone on its public network in December 2023, running on a dedicated 5G core. It was first offered to selected business customers on a trial basis.

Network notes for Ireland

• At the end of June 2026, 30.3 percent of Irish mobile subscriptions were on 5G, 34.2 percent on 4G, 1.7 percent on 3G and 24.7 percent on 2G, counting mobile broadband and machine to machine lines.
• ComReg publishes a predicted outdoor coverage map built from data supplied by Eir, Three and Vodafone. It grades signal from very good to no coverage, which helps when planning a drive through rural areas.