Another interesting article Australian take-up of broadband...

Another interesting article

Australian take-up of broadband rises 23 pct in Q3

CANBERRA, Dec 2 (Reuters) - The take-up of broadband services across Australia rose 23 percent in the September quarter, continuing the pattern of steady growth of the past 15 months, the nation's consumer watchdog said on Monday.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said its latest Snapshot of Broadband Deployment showed 321,900 broadband services were connected in Australia at the end of September.

"Take-up of broadband services has increased by 162 percent since the ACCC began collecting broadband data in June 2001," ACCC chairman Allan Fels said in a statement.

Broadband services allow users to access information from on line networks at a much faster speed than ordinary dial-up services.

Broadband in Australia is predominantly provided using either cable or through Telstra Corp Ltd's (ASX: TLS) traditional copper network using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology.

In June 2001, cable was the most used technology with 92,500 services connected compared to 28,000 DSL services.

Over the past year, however, this pattern has changed with 158,200 cable services by September this year and 151,300 DSL services. The relatively faster growth of DSL services was not surprising as DSL services were now more widely available than cable services, Fels said.