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Mobile broadband booms: ABS

The uptake of mobile broadband is skyrocketing according to a survey released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today, which shows a 21.7 per cent increase between December 2009 and June 2010.
Written by Josh Taylor, Contributor

The uptake of mobile broadband is skyrocketing according to a survey released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today, which shows a 21.7 per cent increase between December 2009 and June 2010.

Internet usage

(Credit: Australian Bureau of Statistics)

According to statistics obtained from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman by the ABS, 3.5 million, or roughly 36 per cent of the 9.6 million active internet subscribers in Australia, are using mobile broadband devices. This is up from 31.7 per cent in December 2009 and an additional 517,000 subscribers in total.

Digital subscriber line (DSL) remains the internet connection of choice for Australian consumers, accounting for 44 per cent of connections in June 2010. Although this is a slight drop from 47 per cent in the last survey released by the ABS, some 68,000 additional users signed up for DSL services in the six-month period.

The report also revealed that approximately 8 per cent of the population are still using dial-up internet connections.

Of the 9.6 million active users, 71 per cent were on connections promising download speeds of 1.5Mbps or more.

Download volumes also experienced a massive rise, jumping 21.5 per cent in the last six months from 124.9 petabytes (PB) in the October-December 2009 period to 151.8PB for the April-June 2010 period.

However, despite the rapid rise in mobile broadband usage, the volume of downloads on mobile broadband surprisingly dropped by 6 per cent since the last survey, from 13.9PB to 13PB.

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