Despite the Government plan to concentrate on fibre to deliver the NBN system, new figures show wireless connections are growing at a faster pace than any other form of Internet.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the number of Internet subscribers in Australia climbed to 10.4 million in the six months to December 2010. This is up from 9.5 million in June 2010, growth of nearly 10 percent in the last six months.
Digital subscriber line (DSL) systems continued to be the major technology for connections, accounting for 43 percent of the total connections, followed by mobile wireless with 40 percent.
Mobile wireless (excluding mobile handset connections) was the fastest growing Internet access technology in actual numbers, increasing from 2.8 million in December 2009 to 4.2 million in December 2010.
At the end of December 2010, there were also 8.2 million mobile phone subscribers with Internet access. They downloaded a total of 4029 terabytes.
