Nearly half of Australian households have broadband connections, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed on Thursday.

The ABS' Household Use Of Information Technology study shows broadband connections jumped over a million to 3.5 million in the past year. All up this comprises 43% of all households.

The total number of Australians in 2006-07 who had home Internet access was 64%. The proportion of households with dial-up Internet access decreased from 51% to 32% during this twelve-month period.

The Australian Capital Territory has the highest proportion of broadband connections, at 58% of households. Tasmania (32%) and South Australia (33%) had the lowest connections.

The dominant type of access technology is still Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), accounting for 70% of households with broadband access. However, the percentage of households using DSL had decreased by 13 percentage points over the previous survey.

The survey also found that 73% (6 million) of Australian households have access to a computer, and 5 million of these have Internet access. Additionally, the Internet is used daily by half (50%) of all Australians over the age of 15, and almost all (91%) use it at least weekly. These figures are much lower for those with lower levels of education, people aged 55 years and over, indigenous people and the unemployed.

Other findings include:

• Of the estimated 11.3 million people who accessed the Internet from any location, 61% used it to purchase or order goods or services for private purposes,
• Metropolitan areas had considerably higher broadband connectivity (49%) than other areas (34%),
• Households with children under 15 had higher broadband access (57%) compared to households without (38%).