Internet subscribers in Australia climbed to 10.4 million in the six months to December 2010, according to a report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is up from 9.5 million in June 2010, which represents a growth of nearly 10% in the last six months.

The number of business and government internet subscribers grew by 26% to 2.3 million, while the number of household internet subscribers grew by 6% to 8.1 million. The growth in both sectors was driven by the continued uptake of mobile wireless broadband connections, which increased by 777,000 ( or 22.5%) to 4.2 million in the six months to 31 December 2010.

At the end of December 2010, there were 8.2 million mobile handset internet subscribers in Australia. The volume of data downloaded via mobile handsets was 4,029 Terabytes.

Further information is available in Internet Activity, Australia (cat. no. 8153.0).