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Australia almost a top-10 broadband user | News | News.com.au

AUSTRALIA'S love affair with the internet has seen it verging on entering the world's top 10 nations for home broadband use.

Among other Asia-Pacific nations, Australia ranked 11th with 72 per cent, Japan ranked 16th with 64 per cent, New Zealand ranked 25th with 57 per cent and China ranked 43rd with 21 per cent.

South Korea, where 95 per cent of homes have broadband, topped the world survey on access to the high-speed internet.

The US, where just 60 per cent of households had broadband as of last year, ranked 20th in the survey of 58 countries by Boston-based Strategy Analytics, released this week.

Five of the top 10 countries or territories in the survey were in Asia and the firm predicted the broadband subscriber base in the Asia-Pacific region will grow on average by a further 15 per cent a year between 2009 and 2013.

Strategy Analytics acknowledged that measuring broadband penetration has been a subject of controversy with arguments being made over whether it should be measured by household or per capita.