The survey, conducted by research firm IDC for Pacific Internet, questioned more than 300 businesses in metropolitan and regional Australia during September. It found many businesses were using residential connections. Just under half of these surveyed spend $20 to $50, while 30 percent spend $51 to $100.

As their business matures, Muscat predicted expenditure would increase as companies paid for additional services such as managed firewalls and security, which is not provided in low-cost plans.

Unlike residential services where there is an insatiable requirement for download space, 71 percent of SMBs download less than 5GB a month. E-mail continues to be the most frequently used Internet application with well over 90 percent of respondents saying it"s the main reason for their broadband connection.

Bandwidth-intensive applications, such as videoconferencing (2 percent) and VoIP (1 percent), didn"t rate much of a mention prompting Muscat to ask "Where is VoIP?" in light of that technology"s constant media spotlight.

"It is not happening in the SMB space. It barely registers. We don"t see any sophistication at this stage," Muscat said.

In contrast, the use of broadband for the delivery of hosted services such as CRM and sales applications was around 10 percent, with 21 percent saying they would consider an application service provider in the future. "This is much bigger than in previous surveys. This is a surprise to us," Muscat said.