81% of Australians have a smartphone, and our data use has grown in staggering numbers

The annual report on the use of communications tools by Australians has been released by the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) and it shows our hunger for content is not slowing down.

If you combine all our internet connections, mobile phone, wireless broadband and fixed line broadband you’ll find a pretty staggering amount of usage – in fact, in just the June quarter it was around 3.171million terabytes.  Yep, 2 trillion floppy disks worth of data – 2.3 to be precise.

Breaking that consumption down across platforms, it’s clear fixed-line home broadband is the clear choice for usage, around 90% of our data consumption happens at home or work, while just 3% happens on mobile phones.

The average Aussie?  Consuming 394.4 GB of data per month, while on the mobile phone they need at least a 6.6GB plan.

Phoning home really means nothing anymore, because you’re now phoning a person not a place, with fixed-line phone dropping again 2017 down to 8.46 from 9.42 in 2013.

So we’re chewing through more data, but either the deals are great or we’re not shopping around – our telco usage has barely changed at all – Telstra corners the market with 54.1% of customers, Optus next with 29% and Vodafone with 16.9% of users.

Staggeringly though, Smartphone using grew big time in this year – 81% of Aussies have a smartphone, up from just 76 last year so a big leap forward.

Whatever your choice, the question is – is it working for you, because if-not there are deals to be had!