Senator the Hon Helen Coonan was Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts from 18 July 2004 to 3 December 2007. This site is available for archival purposes only.

Senator Stephen Conroy is the current Minister for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

95/07
16 July 2007

Australia enjoys strong rankings in the OECD

Australia has received a strong report card in the OECD Communications Outlook 2007, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator the Hon Helen Coonan said.

The OECD report demonstrated Australia’s strong comparative international performance, which in most indicators shows Australia as performing in the middle to upper range, above the OECD average.

“This reflects the type of performance we see domestically, with average prices for telecommunications services having decreased by more than 26 per cent since 1997,” Senator Coonan said.

Key OECD findings relating to Australia include:

Australia has the third highest internet penetration in the world, behind only Switzerland and Sweden;
Among Australia’s broadband plans is the sixth cheapest broadband plan in the OECD on the basis of per megabit pricing; and
Australia enjoyed the fourth highest level of investment per capita in public telecommunications networks (Figures 4.15 and 4.16, page 108) in the OECD in 2005;
Australia’s position was fourth highest in the OECD for fixed access to the internet per 100 inhabitants as of December 2005 (Table 5.7 page 138);
Australia has the ninth highest domain name registrations per capita.

“This is an outstanding achievement considering the particular challenges of providing telecommunications access at fair prices over a vast continent with a small population,” Senator Coonan said.

“In a fast moving area like telecommunications, research findings can quickly become out of date.

“One case that is clearly not an accurate picture of Australia’s performance is that for incumbent DSL broadband speeds. One month after the OECD figures were compiled Telstra removed restrictions on ADSL service and speeds increased from 1.5 megabits per second to 8 megabits per second overnight.

“It is important to remember that no one comparative table or data set can be legitimately used as the measure of the situation of the industry or the experience of consumers in OECD countries: Australia’s performance must be considered as a whole using a range of indicators,” Senator Coonan said.

Media Contact: Katherine Meier 02 9223 4388