Down, down, get it all down
April 2016 - New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that while subscriber numbers to broadband connections are now fairly steady, if taking into account population growth, the volume of data Australians download is rapidly increasing.According to the Internet Activity, Australia, December 2015 report, there were 12.9 million internet subscribers in the 2015 December quarter, around 2% more than in the previous year.
But Australians downloaded more than 1.7 terabytes (TB) - 50% more than in the previous December quarter.
Almost all (98%) of these downloads were through fixed line broadband connections, which rose more than 50% year-on-year.
By comparison, downloads through wireless connections such as satellite, fixed wireless or mobile wireless accounted for just 2% (41,757 TB) of all downloads, although they also rose by 22% year-on-year.
In addition, Australians downloaded 90,693 TB, around 5% of total downloads, using mobile handsets, an increase of 72% year-on-year.
Almost all internet connections are now broadband connections (99.3% at the end of December 2015). Of these, almost half (5 million) were of the DSL type, although, for the first time since 2009, DSL subscriptions dropped slightly in a year-on-year comparison.
By contrast, fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) connections almost doubled between December 2014 and December 2015 (from 324 to 645 subscribers); FTTP were the fastest growing type of internet connection, both in percentage terms and subscriber numbers.