Australian Broadband Connections Soar

By Greg McNevin

December 24, 2008: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, broadband connections down under have rocketed to 4.3 million, with a further 800,000 households signing up during 2007/2008.

The new figures show an increase of 22 percent on last year’s total, bringing the number of households in Australia with broadband connections to 52 percent all up.

The Australian Capital Territory has the highest proportion of Broadband connections, at 68 percent of households while Tasmania (39 percent) and South Australia (42 percent) were the lowest. Other states ranged from 51 to 55 percent.

Three-quarters (6.2 million) of Australian households have access to a computer, and 5.5 million of these have Internet access – representing a five-fold increase in the number of household Internet connections over the last ten years.

The figures also give some insight into changing work patterns, with 6 percent of employed adults having an agreement with their employer to access their computer systems via a modem so that they could work from home. These agreements were more prevalent amongst full-time workers, those employed in the public sector and those in a household with children under the age of 15.

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