Mobile broadband fastest growing sector: ABS

I'm not surprised by these stats ... it's the only option in my area and as such I have no choice ... it's the old Ford Model T principle that states "you can have any colour as long as it's black", well that applies to my area as we can have any type of internet as long as it's Mobile Broadband ... Bring on the NBN ... the sooner the better!!!

No, Leo (#2), you missed the point. Everyone doesn't have a fixed line connection. Only 4.2 million households out of the over 9 million in Australia do. But no-one more is signing up. Everyone's signing up to mobile broadband. It will pass fixed line broadband about the end of this year, and is still growing rapidly. So the government goes out and spends our money, $43B of it, on propping up the loser in the market, fixed line broadband.

Jase, get with the times, wireless technology will continue to improve. LTE = 300Mbs, LTE Advanced = 1Gbps.

In the future everyone will have a mobile phone, so why have a fixed line as well as a mobile phone and effectively pay double?

There are many options to the NBN would should be considered and costed: nbnoptions.org

Todd, you must have little understanding of how wireless networks work.
Those figures are based on having more spectrum and much smaller cell sites than exist currently.

It's like saying travel times will always get faster on the roads because they keep adding more lanes.

The actual spectual efficiency isn't really improved.

Wireless is a good supplementary technology but guess what they run to the bottom of the towers. Fibre.

If you want to get close to those theoretical maximum speeds you need to have lots of smaller towers. To do this you would almost have to roll out as much fibre as it would to just to FTTH. Costs would be higher, prices would be higher and speeds would be lower. Just look at the prices for 4G wireless compared to ADSL2 and preliminary NBN prices..... and 4G gets you ~9Mbps in real world tests.

Also, don't assume that people who have mobile broadband don't rely on a faster and cheaper fixed line primarily. I know of many people who use mobile broadband to check emails and such while on the road but would easily use most of their quota on their fixed line connection. I don't think such situations are non-typical.

What democratic societies should learn a lessen from Australia election 2010:
1. What time bombs will rock Australia democratic society?

The Australia historical hung parliament demonstrated the big gap of inequality society between the small educated elite groups who get highest pay by talk feast used mouth work controlling live essential resources of the country in every social platforms against the biggest less educated groups who get lowest pay by hands work squeezed by discriminative policies that sucking live blood from poor/less wealth off?

Voters’ voices do not hear?
Voters’ pains do not ease?
Voters’ cries do not care?

Why Australia majority are financially suffering today? if we look at the earning gap between leaders whom are controlling power to whom are guiding power by mouths to controlling whom are working by hands in the nation’s creativity to productivity, what have we found?
1. Poverty will not be phase out if no fairer resources to share;
2. Illness will not be reducing if no preventive measurement in real action;
3. Agriculture will not be revitalize if urbanization continuing its path;
4. Housing affordability will not be reach for young generation if government continues cashing from young generation debt by eating out the whole cake of education export revenue without plough back;
5. Manufacture industry will shrink smaller and smaller if no new elements there to power up to survive;
6. Employability will not in the sustainable mode for so long as manufacture and agriculture not going to boost.

Ma kee wai
(Member of Inventor Association Queensland since 1993)

I have just bought an i-pad and am on wi-fi and 3g it is great and does everything i want freedom at last...

The placing of these statistics is highly subjective. When taken against former ABS statistics the implications tell a different story. Take the number of subscribers for instance;

Subscribers Jun 2009 Dec 2009 Jun 2010
DSL ('000) 4,171 4,178 4,246
Fixed wireless ('000) 97 22 33
Mobile wireless ('000) 2,024 2,838 3,455

Total connections('000) 8,420 8,950 9,569

It's clearly evident that there has been no drastic change in the number of fixed line subscribers over the last 12 months. Doesn't appear that people are flocking to replace their fixed line connections in any form.

Additionally, when coupled with the data volume usage stats;

Data Consumed (TB)
Fixed Line BB na 113,410 141,892
Wireless BB na 14,251 13,330

Total 99,249 127,954 155,503

By taking into consideration the fact that mobile subscribers rose by 21.7% in the last 6 months, however data usage decreased by 6.9% over that same period (whilst fixed BB usage increased 25.1%). This leads me to the speculation (not fact, opinion) that the adoption of wireless is heavilly impacted upon the smartphone market, and not as a replacement for fixed line services.

Say what you want about the NBN and its necessity or otherwise, but don't base your judgement on statistics that were taken out of context.

@Todd. You're entirely missing the point that the NBN is not about what we do today, or what light internet users need. It's about the revolution we are currently experiencing in how we communicate and live our lives. Our bandwidth needs are increasing exponentially and are showing no signs of slowing down. You need to look at the big picture, and start to assume that the time is not far off when just about everyone will be using data for a very large portion of the day, whether it be to make calls (Making a phone call on an LTE network uses data just as downloading a video does), making video calls, watching video or just using facebook or reading emails. It's certainly not a stretch to assume that with sufficient capacity, we will have our DTV signals coming in over the NBN, for example.

The problem is that you are proposing that an LTE network is a suitable alternative for most people to the NBN's FTTP network. Clearly from your own statements such a proposal is preposterous. You can't on one hand tout a 300Mbps speed while at the same time claim that most people don't need it, so it doesn't matter that in reality it's only a 7Mbps network. Contention is a far greater issue for mobile networks than for fixed.

Let's say that our current 3G network is entirely replaced with LTE. Hell, let's *double* the current number of towers (Hmmm...that'll be popular). That's 20,000 towers@300Mbps, divided by 8,000,000 households (I'll be nice and not count any business or education use). That will provide an average of about 750kbps for each household if everyone jumps on Youtube at the same time. Let's be even nicer and say that only 10% of households will want to use data or phone at any one time. That's a realistic speed of just 7.5Mbps, from a network *twice* the size of the current one. Can you see how ridiculous this is?

Now can you imagine the far more likely scenario that, say, 25% of 2 or 3 people from each household might be using data during peak daytime periods? That would give them an average bandwidth of 1Mbps.

As I said, 4G is great. And, it will happen regardless of the NBN. But is is not a substitute for it.

FTTN is not a cheaper stop-gap for FTTP. I don't think I can say it better than Internode's Mark Newton, so I'll just quote him:

"The fibre network used to build FTTN will only be useful for FTTP if it's installed with enough cores to connect each house in the neighborhood serviced by the pre-FTTP node. Which is isn't. It never is. Nobody's pulling high-density cables into RIM cabinets. Usually 12 cores at most."

"If someone is going to contrast FTTN against FTTP/FTTH, it's important that they understand that the technical and economic differences between them mean that there's no upgrade path from one to the other. This notion that FTTN is a "stepping stone" to something else is pure fantasy. If an FTTN network is built you'd better like it, because it'll be around for a long, long time to come."

Growth is a relative factor anyway and not really valid for a comparison.

If for example I have 5 wireless connections today and 10 next week then I have a grwoth rate of 100%, however if I have 1.5 million wired connections today and 1.75million next week the growth rate is only 17%, yet in one case we have only increased by 5 versus 250,000 connections .... as such .... growth rate is not a realistic or fair comparison.

Add on top of that the fact that wireless is new technology that didn't exist previously ... all connectiontions are new connections.

As I stated at the very begining of this forum ... I am forced to go wireless and as such contribute to that 'growth' figure. If I had a choice ... I would go NBN fibre to the home every second of everyday.

Bring on the NBN.

HazTechDad and DrGeneRay - thanks for providing some well informed backup for the NBN.
I will never subscribe to a wireless internet solution as a sole option. I will be purchasing a wireless internet dongle for while I travel, but as mentioned earlier I will always hold a fixed line service at home for my regular use.

For too long Telstra has held an almost undisputed monopoly on broadband in remote and regional areas. To pay twice as much for half the service is ridiculous.
Compare our internet solutions to America, where you pay $30 per month for 100Mbps connection with NO limit on downloads, and you'll begin to appreciate exactly what a competitive wholesale market can do for the consumer.

I'm not sayng I expect prices or solutions to reach that point, it's a different market and always will be, but there is nothing wrong with levelling the playing field. To do it on a network which will provide such great benefits to our unique landscape (ie. so many remote and regional locations) in areas such as health and education certainly at least helps to reduce the negatives in cost, however they're interpreted.

I'm with Wes, if there were other options this Stat would be different, Wireless is only growing because in places it is the best option, not that that is saying much. Bring on the NBN, and we will finally have broadband and not updated dial-up.

Oh, look here we go again...

Brattish little children who have been out-debated, using my name... LOL

Is that you again M*KE N*WIN...idiot...thought so, going by your efforts the other morning...

Will you ever learn, LOL

Are we hurting you Crayfish! never mind you always have your boys to go too!
They will tell you how wonderful you are, if you pay them enough!

Would you like to see my Limerick Crayfish!

@29 Sorry, correction to my poor spelling. I meant "spelt"

@31 oh silly me, sorry I need to improve my grammatical skills, the word spelt is correct for my sentence in @29

@21 Bobdole, great points, both mobile and fixed services have a part to play in the connected world.
The one size fits all approach for the NBN is a concern although once rolled out will become part of the suite of BB services available. Business will use the NBN, individuals may react to "sticker shock" in the initial stages. I think the pick up of Pay TV in the early days is an example of new services roll out.