I Had Not Realised Our Broadband Was as Good As It Seems to Be.

A key component of e-Health infrastructure is reliable, reasonably fast and ideally ubiquitous broadband.

I spotted this report a day or so ago and decided to go to the source:

Downloads grow by 50%

Aaron Cook

September 21, 2010

AUSTRALIA'S appetite for the internet continues to grow and the number of wireless internet connections has soared in the last year, a study has found.

A report released yesterday by the Bureau of Statistics shows the amount of data downloaded in the June 2010 quarter increased by more than 50 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier.

In the same period, the number of wireless broadband connections increased by 70 per cent to nearly 3.5 million, while the number of fixed-line broadband connections rose slightly to 4.2 million. The amount of data downloaded every three months is now 11 times higher than March 2005 and 126 times higher than March 2002.

Full article here:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/downloads-grow-by-50-20100920-15jtz.html

The source information is here:

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8153.0?OpenDocument

8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, Jun 2010

Latest ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 20/09/2010 Released Today

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

• The Internet Activity Survey (IAS) collects details on aspects of internet access services provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Australia.
• This release contains results from all ISPs operating in Australia as at 30 June 2010.
• Active subscribers are defined as subscribers who have accessed the internet or paid for access to the internet during the three months ending 30 June 2010. Counts of subscribers are not the same as counts of people/organisations with internet access, as subscribers may have accounts with more than one ISP or multiple accounts with a single ISP.
• This is an electronic release of Internet Activity, Australia. More detailed and historical information is available in the accompanying datacubes.
• This is the first release of wireless connections to the internet via a mobile handset (please see Appendix 1).

HIGHLIGHTS

• At the end of June 2010, there were 9.6 million active internet subscribers in Australia.
• The phasing out of dial-up internet connections continued with nearly 92% of internet connections now being non dial-up. Australians also continued to access increasingly faster download speeds, with 71% of access connections offering a download speed of 1.5Mbps or greater.
• Digital subscriber line (DSL) continued to be the major technology for connections, accounting for 44% of the total internet connections. However, this percentage share has decreased since December 2009 when DSL represented 47% of the total connections.
• Mobile wireless (excluding mobile handset connections) was the fastest growing technology in internet access, increasing to 3.5 million in June 2010. This represents a 21.7% increase from December 2009.

---- End Extract. (Do see site for a great graph of the changes over time).

What I found interesting was the rapid phase out of the old dial-up, the rise in fixed broadband and the staggering rate of growth in wireless internet.

I have to say it seems to me while the NBN will be pretty amazing we really do have something that is pretty useful while we wait!

David.