CANBERRA – Australia had more than 12 million Internet subscribers (excluding mobile handset subscribers) as at June 30, a new survey from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.

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Stats said these figures show an increase of 4 percent in the six months to June 30 and more than 10 percent on the annual figure.

Of these, 5.9 million subscribers were using mobile wireless connections while 4.6 million were using DSL

The number of connections at the top end of the speed ranges (24-100Mbps and 100Mbps or more) grew by 20 percent and 34 percent respectively, since December 2011, accounting for 1.5 million subscribers.

The amount of data downloaded via the Internet (excluding mobile handsets) in the three months to June 30 was 414,537 terabytes, a 20 percent increase since December.

At the end of June, there were 16.2 million mobile handset subscribers in Australia, an increase of nearly 7 percent in six months.

There were 5.9 million mobile wireless broadband connections, an increase of 7 percent.Mobile wireless broadband was again the most prevalent Internet technology in Australia, accounting for 49 percent of all connections.

Of the 12 million Internet subscribers in Australia at the end of June, 76 percent were classified as household subscribers, while 24 percent were from business and government.