The Average Australian Only Downloads 6GB A Month

If you’re a Lifehacker reader, chances are you often reach the end of the month and curse the fact that you’ve chewed through your download limit. Statistically speaking, however, that makes you an exception to the rule. New data suggests the average Internet user Australian downloads less than 6GB a month.

According to research from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), in the December 2010 quarter a typical Internet subscriber using ADSL or cable accessed just 17.5GB — less than 6GB for each month. (Unsurprisingly, usage on mobile broadband is a lot lower, at just over 0.5GB each month, though 3.7 million Australians now have access to a mobile broadband service.)

Those figures remind us yet again providers can afford to offer high download limits on their services — the vast majority of people won’t go anywhere near the limits. Lifehacker has long maintained that anything less than 2GB is a bad idea because OS updates can chew all that data up, but it looks like 10GB a month would cover many Australian households. Would it cover yours?

ACMA


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