According to the latest Internet Activity report issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, dial-up internet connections are on a massive decline with around 90 per cent of consumers opting for high-speed alternatives.

The recent report contains results from all ISPs operating in Australia with more than 1,000 active subscribers.

At the end of December 2009, there were 9.1 million active internet subscribers in Australia. It is evident that the phase-out of dial-up connections is continuing with nearly 90 per cent of connections now being a non dial-up alternative.

There were approximately 1,286,000 dial-up connections in December 2008. This has now plummeted to 927,000 as of December 2009.

In terms of non dial-up alternatives (including DSL, cable and fibre, satellite, fixed wireless and mobile wireless), there were 6,639,000 connections in December 2008. A year later this has increased to 8,184,000.

In addition to these findings, the ABS data outlined that Australians are accessing higher download speeds, with 62 per cent of access connections having a download speed of 1.5Mbps or greater.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections were the most popular form of internet connection with 51 per cent of the market.

Mobile wireless via datacard, dongle or USB modem was reported to be the fastest growing technology in 2009. There are around 2.8 million mobile wireless connections as of December 2009. This represented a 40 per cent increase from June 2009.