Irish mobile phone users are increasingly using more data as the volume of phone calls and texts drops, a report shows.

A quarterly report from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) details how the average mobile user used 4.5 gigabytes of data on a monthly basis, an increase of almost 65 per cent on the same period last year.

Meanwhile, the 83 texts sent by the average user represented a drop of 12.8 per cent while the length of calls fell marginally to 212 minutes per month.

Additionally, fixed line calls represents a fraction of total ‘voice minutes’ with users preferring mobile 77.5 per cent of the time.

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In terms of broadband, ComReg noted that speeds increased in the third quarter of this year with 81.5 per cent of users having subscriptions greater than or equal to 10 megabytes per second.

The number of people with fixed broadband subscriptions now stands at 1.39 million, up 3.6 per cent compared to the third quarter in 2016 while the estimated household broadband penetration rate is higher than the EU average at 86 per cent.