DESPITE the relative population difference, WA has a high number of Internet Service Providers compared to New South Wales and Victoria.
And Western Australians are downloading more than the national average – 313.7 megabytes compared to 281MB in September.
However, both State and national Internet Service Provider numbers continued to decline throughout 2001, in WA falling from 120 in the December 2000 quarter to 95 in the September 2001 quarter.
Across the country ISP numbers have fallen from 718 in September 2000 to 603 at the end of the September 2001 quarter.
Nearly 10 per cent of Australia’s Internet subscribers live in WA, and 75 per cent of them are based in Perth.
The most recent figures available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on this matter cover the three months to September 2001. The figures show WA is home to 357,000 household and business Internet accounts, 269,000 of which are in Perth. Outside of Perth, most other subscribers (35,000) reside in the South West region.
The number of Internet subscribers in WA fell by 16,000 from the June 2001 quarter, but is up substantially from the 318,000 subscribers recorded in the September 2000 quarter.
