Wireless broadband certainly has its challenges, but it’s proving increasingly popular. According to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as of June 2010 3.5 million Australians were using wireless broadband, but we’re not dragging a lot of data down on those connections.
Picture by spree2010
That number has gone up by almost 21.7% since December 2009. In total, there are 9.6 million active Internet subscribers in Australia. DSL continues to dominate with 4.2 million users, but at this rate mobile broadband almost looks like becoming the norm. (That said, the statistics don’t identify people who have both wired and wireless connections, which I’m guessing is a fair proportion of the total.)
The other notable figure in the data is the contrast in data downloaded on different networks. While DSL was responsible for almost 142,000TB over a three-month period, wireless broadband users consumed less than 10% of that number, with 13,330TB in the same time frame.
Those numbers also demonstrate that not terribly many people will find a 1TB download plan useful. The total amount of data downloaded in a month by those 9.6 million Australians was just over 155,000TB, meaning the average per user was just 5GB. That’s another reason to estimate your usage needs carefully so you don’t pay too much.
If you’re seeking out a new wireless broadband plan, check our comprehensive Planhacker guides to prepaid and postpaid options.
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