The inability of ComReg to enforce decisions has led to delays in the development and rollout of broadband services within the State, a report by the European Commission has found.
The EC also described Ireland's broadband performance as poor and said the sector suffered from a lack of competition.
Access to broadband is seen as crucial to European competitiveness, but the report notes that many member states are falling behind competitors such as the United States and Japan.
The report estimates that there were 58 million broadband subscribers by the start of 2006. In Ireland just over 5.3 per cent of the population were broadband subscribers compared to rates of nearly 24 per cent in The Netherlands, 22.5 per cent in Denmark and over 20 per cent in Finland. The average among the EU15 is 13 per cent.
DSL broadband is becoming increasingly important at the expense of cable and other technologies. DSL now accounts for 80 per cent of fixed broadband lines, compared to 16.8 per cent of lines provided by cable.
The report says there is a clear downward trend in price for Internet and voice telephony services, although the pricing rates for broadband vary cross the member states.
But it adds there remains great variance between mobile call costs between member states with operators' price transparency an ongoing problem.