The Australian Bureau of Statistics' final Internet Activity Survey was published this week and indicates downloads are continuing to grow rapidly.
The report notes 14.7 million internet subscribers across Australia at the end of June of this year, an increase of 3.6% from the end of December 2017.
The total volume of data downloaded by Australia's internet users in the three months ended 30 June 2018 was a whopping 3.8 billion gigabytes (3 million terabytes or 3.8 exabytes). That's the equivalent of streaming 3.8 billion hours of standard definition video or around 1.26 billion hours of high definition.
With such an appetite for data, it's little wonder unlimited broadband plans are attractive to many Australians. Fixed line connections accounted 96.8% of data downloaded (3,714,068 terabytes).
In terms of connection types, fibre connections jumped 22.4% in the six months between December 2017 and June 2018, and for the year to June 2018 growth was 69.8%, reaching 3.6 million subscribers.
Fixed wireless broadband connections also grew substantially, from 138,000 in June 2017 to 217,000 in June this year (+57%). Mobile wireless subscribers also continued to grow, from 6,107,00 to 6,561,000.
The drops were in cable subscribers; from 1,010,000 to 937,000 and DSL, from 4,233,000 to 3,232,00. As for dialup users, ABS gave up counting those some time ago. The last figures we had were from October 2016, when the number of dialup subscribers dwindled to 90,000. Back then, there were just 960,000 fibre subscribers and 83,000 fixed wireless users.
The full report can be viewed here : 8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, June 2018
So Long ABS, And Thanks For All The Stats
On a related note, ABS will no longer be collecting this information after a 17-year stint of doing so. This will now apparently fall to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) from the December 2018 reporting period onwards. Further information can be found here.
The ABS's very first Internet Activity report was published in March 2001. The first survey indicated there were 3.8 million Internet subscribers registered in Australia at the end of the September quarter 2000, who downloaded one *million* gigabytes of data over the previous three months (compared to 3.8 * billion* gigabytes in the three months ended 30 June 2018). Furthermore, 43% of the data downloads were attributable business and government subscribers.
Back in September 2000, 15% of subscribers were on an hourly access plan.
