The number of Australian internet subscribers grew 4.2% from the end of June 2015 to the end of June this year to reach 13.3 million - and they are data hungry.
According to statistics released by ABS last week, the fastest growing type of internet connection during the period was fibre; more than doubling from 420,000 to 960,000 subscribers.
Fixed wireless connections decreased slightly, from 84,000 to 83,000.
The drawn-out death of dialup continues; with the number of subscribers dropping from 95,000 in June last year to 90,000 this year.
Data consumption has continued to grow significantly. 2.1 million Terabytes (or 2.1 Exabytes) of data was downloaded in the three months ending 30 June 2016. This was a 22.3% increase compared to the three months ending 31 December 2015.
Fixed line broadband represented the biggest consumer of data, accounting for 2.05 million Terabytes) - 97.7%. Fixed line broadband data downloads increased by a massive 51.8% from June 2015 to June 2016.
Australia's 22 million mobile subscribers averaged 1.8 GB of data downloaded per subscriber per month.
Australians are certainly also indicating a need for speed. 7.5 million internet subscribers were on broadband plans advertised as having a speed of 24Mbps or faster by the end of June according to the ABS.
The total number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with more than 1,000 subscribers also grew between December and June from 62 to 66. However, the number is still behind June 2015; when there were 69 ISP's with a subscriber base of 1,000 or more.
Further details can be viewed here : Australian Bureau of Statistics 8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, June 2016.
With regard to how Australia is stacking up against the rest of the world for connection speeds, the country is still lagging well behind in some apects.
According to Akamai's recently released State Of The Internet 2016 - Q2, Australia was ranked 51st in the world for average connection speed (8.5Mps); behind countries including New Zealand and Thailand.
The figure was 3.3% slower than the previous quarter, but 6.8% faster year over year. In Q4 last year, Australia was 48th in Akamai's rankings for average connection speed.
While the country powered ahead on average peak connection speed overall at 51.1 Mbps (+16% QoQ and +24% YoY), Australia still only ranks no. 56 globally.
Akamai's State Of The Internet 2016 - Q2 can be viewed in full here (PDF).
