Australia’s broadband, wireless internet boom

 Australians took up broadband and wireless internet connections in record numbers in 2007, new internet activity survey results collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal.

The number of people with a broadband connection in Australia jumped 33% between September 2006 and December 2007, from 3.91 million to over 5.21 million.

Most of those were converts from dial-up rather than new internet users, but the total number of internet connections did increase over that period 6.65 million to 7.1 million.

But possibly the biggest change to the internet landscape in 2007 was the arrival of wireless broadband. Over 481,000 people were connected to wireless broadband at the end of the December quarter, more than three times the 186,000 connected in September 2006.

Broadband speeds have also picked up significantly; the number of people with broadband capable of download speeds of 1.5Mbps or greater, increasing by 35% to 2.51 million in the 15 months to December 2007.