Australian wireless data connections surge

Australia has 117 wireless broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, the OECD has found in its latest round of data access statistics. This comes on the back of a 13 per cent increase in smartphone connections in the first half of 2013.

Finland, Sweden, Japan, Korea and Denmark are also above the 100 per cent penetration level in the group of 34 countries; Mexico, Hungary, Turkey, Chile and Portugal have the lowest, all falling below the 40 percent markl.

OECD countries collectively saw mobile subscriptions rise sharply, by 16.6 percent to 851 million in the first half of last year. The increase was driven by smartphones and tablets OECD analysts say. 

Source: OECD

On top of mobile phones with and without the voice component, OECD counts point to point or fixed access and satellite in its wireless broadband subscriptions category.

For fixed broadband access, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) which runs over copper wiring continues to be the most common and still has over half of all connections. 

DSL is increasingly being replaced by fibre-optic access howver. OECD says fibre-optic broadband subscriptions stood at 15.75 per cent of the total in the first half of 2013 with large growth seen in countries such as France, UK and Turkey which have low penetration of the technology currently.

Japan and Korea are at the top of the OECD fibre-optic connections chart, with both countries seeing more than two-thirds of connections using the next generation fixed broadband access technology.