Australia"s SMB broadband connection hits 77 percent

27.10.2005
Von Howard Dahdah

A snapshot of broadband in the Australian SMB market reveals DSL to be the most popular delivery method of high-speed Internet; users average a monthly spend of A$20 (US$15) to A$50 and download less than 5GB of data in that time.

These are just some of a plethora of statistics revealed on Wednesday by ISP Pacific Internet in its annual broadband survey, the Broadband Barometer.

Noticeably, the survey reveals 77 percent of Australian SMBs -- listed as those business with fewer than 200 employees - have a connection to the Internet that is 256Kbps and higher. In contrast, the number of households with broadband is just over 10 percent, significantly less than nations such as Korea and Canada which have take-up rates well over 20 percent.

Dennis Muscat, Pacific Internet managing director, said the discrepancy between business and residential take-up is due to the absence of competition in the residential market until only a couple of years ago, and the tax deductions for SMBs for their broadband connections.

Although the Pacific Internet Broadband Barometer focuses only on SMB, John Kranenburg, chairman of the service providers association SPAN, said lifting residential numbers should be a priority.