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Australia drops in OECD broadband rankings

Australia has dropped from 18th to 21st in the OECD rankings for fixed broadband penetration for the last six months of 2013.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

The latest set of statistics released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that while Australia still remains strong in mobile subscriber penetration, the country is slipping down the ranks for the number of fixed broadband customers per capita.

The statistics released overnight revealed that at the end of December 2013, there were slightly over 6 million fixed broadband subscribers in Australia, equating to roughly 26 percent of the total population. The majority of these customers were on DSL technology at 21.2 percent, versus 4.1 percent on cable, and 0.7 percent on fibre.

The result is an improvement for Australia, up from 25.6 percent penetration as of June 2013, but slight gains in other OECD countries put Australia down from tied 18th with Austria down to 21st.

The statistics, provided to the OECD by the government also indicate that despite the rollout of the NBN picking up momentum in the second half of 2013, the percentage of Australians connected via fibre somehow dropped from 1.97 percent to 0.7 percent.

Switzerland topped the list with 44.9 percent of its citizens with fixed line broadband, followed by the Netherlands, Denmark, France, and Korea.

Turkey was at the bottom of the rankings, with just 11.2 percent of its citizens connected to fixed broadband.

Growth in mobile remained as strong as ever, although Australia lost its top ranking for mobile subscriber penetration for the half to Finland, which now has a 123.3 percent penetration rate, Australia still came in second at 114.4 percent penetration, or a total of 26.4 million subscriptions for a population of 23 million.

Australia was ahead of Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Korea and the United States, which for the first time reached 100 percent penetration, with over 300 million mobile subscribers.

Mexico was at the bottom of the list, with 14 percent of its citizens with a mobile subscription.

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