According to a report just released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), for the first time ever, there are now mobile phones than people in this big brown land, with 21.26 million mobile phone services in operation as of 30 June 2007, a 7.6 per cent increase from 19.76 million the year before.
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‘There are now more than 4.5 million 3G mobile services in Australia, a 192 per cent increase between 30 June 2006 and 30 June 2007,’ said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman.
The number of fixed services dropped from 11.26 million to 10.92 million between 30 June 2006 and 30 June 2007. The number of payphones in operation in Australia dropped by 8,368, to 49,862.
In 2006-07, geographic numbers were predominantly allocated for VoIP services – 2.89 million out of a total 3.23 million. This increase says ACMA, is a sign of competition and the entry of new VoIP providers into the Australian market requiring a supply of numbers for services across the country.
Internet subscribers were another area of communications services growth. There were 6.43 million internet subscribers in Australia, made up of 2.09 million narrowband and 4.33 million broadband subscribers (to the end of March 2007). Domain name registrations also grew: 795,368 .com.au registrations in the year compared with 612,918 from the previous year.
The analysis also concluded that total production in the Australian economy in 2006-07 grew by an additional $1.2 billion due to price and service competition within the telecommunications sector.
