The official figure of just over 3.16 million users as at March 31 was a jump of 376,600 subscribers on the last quarterly snapshot of 2.78 million to December 31.

Year-by-year uptake has been an even more impressive 1.38 million (78 per cent), from the March 2005 figure of 1.77 million users.

ACCC communications general manager, Michael Cosgrave, said price and possible word of mouth over the past 12 months had driven the market.

"Clearly there's been a reduction in prices in that period of time and more services available in the market," he said. "It's like any emerging service once you get a proportion of people on it. There's been communication in the community about it to some degree."

Cosgrave also cited more ubiquitous ADSL network for driving new broadband connections. According to its report, just over 2.2 million users are currently attached to the Internet via DSL-based services.