Aussies downloaded 1.7 exabytes of data in Dec quarter

Australians downloaded 1.7 exabytes (1.7 million terabytes) of data during the December quarter, up 23.5% from the previous three months and 50.4% year-on-year, ABS statistics show.

Excluding data downloaded from smartphones, an overwhelming 98% of the data downloaded by Australians during the quarter was through fixed broadband connections, including DSL, cable, FTTP and other technologies.

But data downloaded from wireless technologies including satellite, fixed wireless and dongle-based mobile broadband during the quarter did grow 21.6% to 41,757 terabytes.

The total number of internet subscribers meanwhile edged up to around 12.9 million, up 2% year-on-year. The statistics show that subscriber growth has slowed significantly since the end of 2011.

The number of subscribers to services with advertised download speeds of 8 Mbps or higher meanwhile increased to 10.6 million, up 16.8% year-on-year.

Fibre is the fastest growing type of internet connection, no doubt due in part to the NBN. The number of fibre connections doubled between December 2014 and December 2015 to 645,000.

Mobile phone subscribers meanwhile grew 1.4% year-on-year to 21.3 million. Mobile users downloaded 90,693 terabytes of data over their handsets in the December quarter, up 27% quarter-on-quarter. This translates to an average of 1.4 GB of data downloaded per subscriber per month.

Image courtesy of kenjoey under CC