Seven Key Facts About What Aussies Do Online


The annual Communications Report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority offers a wealth of statistics about how we get online and what we do when we get there. Here are the seven which stuck out for us.

Picture by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

We’re downloading more

Back in July, ACMA reported that the typical Australian downloaded just 6GB a month. It now calculates that number at 25.1GB — a lot higher, but still indicating that the majority of Aussies are not maxing out their connection downloading new episodes of Glee or Doctor Who or Come Dine With Me.

TV downloading is still uncommon

Confirming that point, the report also suggests that 1 million Australians are regularly downloading TV, up from 0.8 million the previous year, but still a relatively rare option. Perhaps more remarkably, only 1.1 million regularly watch streaming services. We like iView.

There are still more mobile services than people

Right now, the population of Australia is approximately 22.7 million, but new data from the suggests there are 29.8 million mobile services active throughout the country. Note that this is services rather than phones. Which makes sense when you consider that . . .

There’s a lot of mobile broadband going on

There are now 4.79 million mobile broadband services. That’s more than the number of ADSL services (4.49 million), but as ever it’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t mean mobile is the future and home connections are dead, since ADSL services are far more often shared that mobile broadband.

We don’t use mobile broadband for big files

The report also points out that 93 per cent of data is downloaded through fixed line rather than mobile services. The total volume of data downloaded by Australians in the June quarter was 274 terabytes, but just 19TB of that came from mobile broadband.

Not everyone has net access on their phone

There are 14.8 million mobile service subscriptions which don’t have any Internet access, compared to 9.7 million that do.

50 per cent of Australians go online once a day

How on earth are the other 50 per cent running their lives?

ACMA


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


12 responses to “Seven Key Facts About What Aussies Do Online”

Leave a Reply