wireless broadband more popular than cable

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released its latest Internet Activity Report. It has included mobile handsets for the first time putting mobile connections well ahead of fixed.

On the basis of the ABS's previous methodology there were 9.6 million Internet connections of all types in Australia at the end of June, 3.455 million of which were mobile wireless defined as being USB dongles or modems, and data cards.

In addition to this 9.6 million it has now identified 6.781 million subscribers with active Internet connections from their mobile handsets, giving a total of over 10 million subscribers using cellular networks for Internet access.

ABS has collected data on dongle and datacard usage since 2006 but has hitherto excluded mobile handsets because "they were not viewed as a viable alternative to traditional fixed-line Internet connections."

ABS notes that "with the recent emergence of more powerful mobile handsets, high speed Internet access is now possible via a mobile handset [and] increasingly, this type of internet connection is viewed as a viable alternative to fixed-line internet access."

The ABS says it has conducted an investigation into a suitable methodology to collect data on Internet connections via mobile handsets, and has extended its mobile wireless definition to include 'dedicated data subscriptions' and all other 'active standard mobile subscriptions' via mobile handsets.

It defines a 'dedicated data subscription' as "a subscription over a mobile network which is purchased separately to voice services either as a stand-alone service or as an add-on package," and says there were 1.214 million of these at the end of June.

In addition there were 5.566 million "active standard mobile subscriptions" defined as "mobile services which have access to the internet via HTTP and have been used to make a data connection using Internet Protocol (IP) within the three months of the reference period." This includes casual or incidental browsing via a mobile handset where a dedicated data subscription has not specifically been purchased.

These numbers are in addition to the 3.455 million dongle and datacard subscriptions. However while numerically the number of handsets being used for Internet access might be fairly substantial, their actual usage is much less so. The ABS estimates that in the three months to 30 June a total of only 717 terabytes of information was downloaded to handsets compared to 13,300 terabytes for all other wireless connections (including satellite) which itself was less than one tenth of the volume downloaded over fixed broadband services.

The ABS notes that these definitions align with the OECD's wireless broadband indicator methodology but adds that the data "are considered to be experimental while the ABS refines its collection methodology" and will be released separately to the main Internet data while it determines the reliability of its estimates.

The full results of ABS's latest assessment of Internet active are available on its web site.

This article first appeared in ExchangeDaily, iTWire's daily newsletter for telecommunications professionals.

Source:
http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/networking/41978-wireless-internet-connections-exceed-fixed-line