The number of Internet subscribers in Australia is growing slowly, despite increasing reach of the National Broadband Network – but the amount of data they download is increasing at a furious rate.
These are among the conclusions to be drawn from the latest figures on Australian Internet usage, compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (“Stats”) and published yesterday.
The release, which covers activity in June, includes information on Internet subscribers by type of connection, type of user (business or household), volume of data downloaded, advertised speed of connection and location of the subscriber by state or territory.
According to the ABS, Australia had about 13.3 million Internet subscribers at the end of June – up just 4.2 percent from a year earlier.
Subscribers with mobile connections led the way at 6.04 million, followed by DSL (5.03 million), cable (1.03 million), and fibre at 960,000. Satellite subscribers numbered 62,000, while 83,000 were connecting via fixed wireless.
While the overall number of users was up only 4pc, the amount of data they were downloading soared to 2.1 million terabytes – or 2.1 exabytes – over the three months ended June 30. This was up 22.3pc on the volume of downloads in the quarter ended December 31 2015.
The volume of data downloaded by fixed-line broadband, at 2.05 million terabytes, was up an astounding 51.8 percent, the ABS reports.
Meanwhile, some 21.9 million mobile handset users downloaded 121,147 terabytes of data.
