Executive summary

Key trends:

Mobile services are now at saturation levels with 2013–14 seeing the first, albeit small, decline in the number of mobile services in operation to 31.01 million mobile services—a 0.3 per cent decline on the previous year.

There is evidence of a similar slow down occurring in the growth of internet connections, with approximately 81 per cent of Australians (14.7 million) having an internet connection in the home, with growth slowing over the past three years.

Australians are engaging more intensively online, downloading more data and making greater use of mobile handsets. In the six months to May 2014, 68 per cent of internet users accessed the internet via three or more devices. Mobile phones and laptop computers were the most popular devices used by adult Australians to access the internet at May 2014 (76 per cent and 74 per cent, respectively). While use of mobile devices to access the internet has seen significant growth, fixed-line broadband (with subscriptions that generally offer faster download speeds and larger data plans than mobile handset internet subscriptions) nonetheless contributed 93 per cent of total growth in data downloads during the June quarter of 2014.

The total volume of data downloaded in Australia during the June quarter of 2014 was 53 per cent higher than the volume downloaded during the June quarter of 2013—data downloaded via fixed-line broadband increased by 53 per cent and downloads via wireless broadband increased by 20 per cent.

Australians have continued the shift towards over-the-top (OTT) and mobile communications for voice services, while the use of digital media also increased, with 44 per cent of adult Australians (6.4 million) streaming music, movies, TV programs, video clips or radio—a 21 percentage point increase over the past five years. Video and audio content is contributing to the continued growth in the volume of data downloaded. The availability of higher-speed internet services on both fixed and mobile networks, larger data download plans and growth in the use of cloud content services are contributing factors to increases in streaming and downloading. From a regulatory perspective, the compliance performance of Australia’s communications and media organisations with regulated performance requirements has generally been very strong.