An increasing number of Australians are joining the online community, using faster speeds to do so. At the end of December 2010, there were 10.4 million active internet subscribers in Australia. Ninety-three per cent of internet connections are no longer dial-up and 81 per cent of connections offer a download speed of 1.5 megabits or greater.

When Australians connect to the internet, they increase their online activity over time, finding more and more uses for their connection. The amount of time people spend online and the amount of data they consume is increasing. From June 2005 to June 2010, the number of Australians considered heavy users (online activity of more than 15 hours a week) of the internet doubled.

Once online, data consumption is increasing. In December 2010, Australians downloaded 191 839 terabytes of information. This is a significant increase compared with the 99 249 terabytes downloaded in the 2009 June quarter–close to twice as much. The majority of data is downloaded via fixed-line broadband services (91 per cent of data downloads).