Despite what appears to be a growing number of complaints about poor Internet speeds on the NBN – in some cases as low as 1.5Mbps – the majority of Australians Internet subscribers are connecting at 24MBbps or more, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Stats’ most recent Internet Activity Survey – for the six months to December 2016 – shows that out of 13.46 million broadband subscribers, 7.55 million, or 56.1 percent, were connected at speeds between 24 and 100Mbps.
Another 3.36 million were connected at speeds between eight and 24Mbps; and 286,000 at 100Mbps or better.
By contrast some 2.25 million Aussies were connected at speeds between 1.5 and 8Mbps, while just 92,000 were receiving less than 1.5Mbps.
The ABS figures also reveal that Australian broadband users are downloading significantly more data. Total volume of data downloaded in the three months to December 31 was just under 2.6 million terabytes, up 23.2 percent from the three months ended June 2016 – and a whopping 50.8 percent on the December 2015 figure.
The number of DSL subscribers dropped in the year, from 5.03 million to 4.7 million – presumably reflecting the move to NBN connections.
Of these, 1.4 million were on fibre, up from just 645,000 a year earlier; 1.048 million were on cable, 76,000 connecting via satellite; 102,000 on fixed wireless – and (the biggest number by far) 6.08 million by mobile wireless.
