By Keri Algar

SYDNEY, NSW: Internet subscribers have surpassed the 10 million mark in Australia, with the number of business and government subscriptions growing by 26 per cent in the six months to December 2010.

Business and government internet subscribers grew to 2.3 million, over four times the growth of household subscriptions between June 2010 and December 2010. The growth in both sectors has been largely driven by the escalating uptake of mobile wireless broadband, up 22.5 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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According to the figures, almost a third of Australians have mobile handsets with internet subscriptions, fixing smartphones in Australia’s mobile landscape. Internet enabled mobiles jumped 21 per cent in the six months to December 2010 to 8.2 million. The amount of data downloaded through mobiles was 4,029 terabytes.

Excluding internet connections via handsets there were 10.4 million internet subscribers in Australia in December 2010.