Broadband takeup in AU slows - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Broadband takeup in AU slows

By Patrick Gray, 0
March 20, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Broadband-takeup-in-AU-slows/0,130061791,120273032,00.htm

Australia's take-up of broadband technologies may be slowing, according to figures released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The rate of broadband adoption has slipped by around 13 percent, from 29.2 percent in the April-June quarter last year to 16.4 percent in the October-December quarter.

ACCC Chairman Professor Allan Fels says that the biggest drop occurred across ADSL services.

"In the April-June quarter growth in ADSL take-up was 51.4 percent, but this declined to 24.1 percent in the July-September quarter and 16 per cent in the October-December quarter," he said.

Industry analyst Paul Budde says the figures show that Australia is continuing to slip behind the rest of the world.

"I'm disappointed. It's still growing and that's great, but if we keep on growing at this rate we'll never catch up with the rest of the world," he told ZDNet Australia.

The report says that at the end of December 2002, there were 363,500 broadband users in Australia, up by 51,300 since September 2002. Budde says this is very much in line with Telstra's goal of achieving broadband subscription numbers of one million by 2005.

But he says that we need to accelerate our growth, because even if we meet Telstra's goal it will "only increase the gap between us and the rest of the world".

He cites OECD statistics which show that Australia has slipped from 12 to 19 on the list of OECD countries' use of broadband.

"We'll wind up on the 40th position on the list [by 2005]," he said.

Budde was also quick to point out that in Korea 85 percent of Internet households have broadband, in Hong Kong the figure is 80 percent and that Australia's statistic is closer to 7 percent.