Australian access and subscribers      

• At the end of June 2010, there were 9.6 million active internet subscribers in Australia.
• 92% of Australian internet subscriptions were non dial-up in June 2010.
• 71% of Australian access connections offered download speeds of 1.5Mbps or greater in June 2010.
• Mobile wireless (excluding handset connections) was the fastest growing technology in internet access, up 21.7% from December 2009.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Australia in Context

• In 2006-07 BB speeds in OECD countries increased by 27%, while costs decreased by 16%.
• There were around 309 million internet subscribers in OECD countries in 2006. This number has doubled in 6 years.·       
• In 2006, OECD Europe accounted for 44% of OECD  Internet Subscribers, North America for 38% and OECD Asia and Oceania for the remaining 18%.
• In 2007, Korea (94%), Iceland (84%) and the Netherlands (83%) had the highest share of households with home access to the internet.
• In 2007, 64% of Australian households had access to the internet, above the OECD average of 58%. However, only 93.5% of Australian medium and large businesses were using the internet, compared to an OECD average of 95%.
• In all OECD countries, elderly people are less likely to use the Internet than young people.
• In most OECD countries, men are more likely than women to use the internet. However, this trend was reversed in the US, Canada and New Zealand.
• Internet usage is lower for less educated individuals all the OECD, while internet penetration is the highest among high-income households.
• In 2007, less than 55% of Australian businesses had a web-presence. This compares to an OECD average of 67%. More than 87% of Japanese businesses were on the internet. 

E-retail

• Online retail sales in the US alone reached US$175 billion in 2007 and are forecast to almost double to US$335 billion by 2012. (CSIRO/Forrester 2010).
• In 2009, the internet contributed an estimated £100 billion, or 7.2% of GDP to the UK economy. Approximately 60% of the Internet economy is driven by consumption, a reflection of the UK’s strength in e-commerce. The UK is a net exporter of e-commerce goods and services, exporting £2.80 for every £1 it imports. (Boston Consulting Group, 2010) 
• 32% of Australians have purchased retail items online. (Consumer Commerce Barometer).

• A 2007 US study (by the Centre for Information Technology Leadership at Harvard)  estimated that, if the necessary broadband was in place, the following could be avoided:
• 850,000 patients transports between emergency departments
• 40,000 transfers from prisons to medical centres
• 387,000 transfers from nursing homes to health facilities
• And a 19.7% reduction in unnecessary tests and trials using real-time video consulting and a 21.8% reduction using store and forward image transfer.
• After recouping installation costs (5 years) net savings of approximately $US4.28 billion per year could be realised. If simple population relativity is applied, this equates to around $296 million per year in Australia. (Access Economics 2010)
  
• One of the telehealth services currently reimbursed by Medicare is rural tele-psychiatry. Tele-nurse support has found to improve depression outcomes by 50% over the control group, who receives only medication. (Access Economics 2010).
• Two-thirds of Australian radiology service providers use tele-radiology, including around 20% who send their images interstate for diagnosis (Access Economics 2009). This leads to improved productivity in over 75% of cases.
• Around 2% of radiology images are now analysed by Australian radiographers who are employed overseas, so that their standard hours can overlap with Australia’s night hours. (Access Economics 2010).

• In the US from 1998-2002, employment in communities with broadband was found to grow 1-1.4% faster than communities without it. So for a rural town with a population of 10,000, broadband would yield an additional 100-140 jobs. Broadband communities also showed increases in the number of businesses overall and in the number of businesses in IT-intensive sectors (MIT 2006). 
• Proprietary research suggests that SMEs that are active online are more successful, are growing more quickly and are reaching wider markets than their peers (Boston Consulting Group, 2010).