In 2014, New Zealanders used 53 percent more Internet data than they did last year, says Statistics New Zealand. The agency has just released its latest survey of ISPs.
At a massive 53,000 terabytes, our data use is soaring to new heights.
“The amount of data used was equivalent to streaming over 12 million high-definition super-hero movies,” international and business performance statistics manager Jason Attewell said.
"Additionally, almost half of all broadband connections have data caps of 50 gigabytes or more. Three years ago, only 4 percent had data caps this large."
Not only are we consuming more data, we are getting it much faster.
“Fibre is synonymous with faster Internet. While copper connections still dominate the broadband market, fibre has jumped to 46,000 connections – three times what it was last year," Mr Attewell said.
While the above figures do not include Internet connections from mobile phones or the data they consume, these alone rose 16 percent to 3.7 million.
"That's a connected mobile phone for every 4 out of 5 Kiwis. Due to the large number of devices, apps, and networks available, more people have access to a wider range of goods and services through the Internet while on the go," Mr Attewell said.
These figures come from the 2014 annual Internet Service Provider Survey, a supply side collection that covers all Internet service providers in New Zealand.
See the full survey here.
Expect to see another big jump in caps in Stats NZ's next survey. Spark, which holds around 50% of the retail ISP market, introduced an unlimited plan in May. And new market entrants like Big Pipe (a Spark sub-brand and MyRepublic are offering no-data-limit plans across the board).