Government transactions are the fastest growing segment, says Budde in a series of industry reports released last week.

But there's a long way to go. Only 5 percent of businesses are buying and selling online, with most buying and foregoing online sales opportunities.

The B2B market was worth 6.2 billion Australian dollars ($3.34 billion) in 2001 or just two percent of GDP, and the B2C market was even smaller.

Property services, business services and power/gas/water utilities used the most e-commerce.

The spectacular developments this year have been Telstra's lower prices, followed by the government's broadband strategy and the formation of the government's Broadband Advisory Group (better known as BAG).

Only 150,000 homes have broadband services, although more than half of all households in Australia could get services.

It will take four to five years to bring this up to 70-75 percent. The remainder can never be connected to cable and will rely on satellite and wireless.

The Australian Internet market reached more than 4.5 million subscribers in 2001, growing some 40 percent over the year and covering half the population.

The estimated number of all users exceeded 10 million, with 6 million home users. The most common activity is e-mail, with 91 percent sending messages in the year, and 1.5 million using e-mail exclusively.

There were 630 Internet service providers (ISPs) and more than one million Internet hosts in an industry worth 2 billion Australian dollars ($1.08 billion) in non-e-commerce revenues.

Online tax services are claimed to be one of the fastest growing applications for personal and banking users.

The Budde reports are available at http://www.budde.com.au .

Exchange Rate: $1 = 1.85 Australian dollars

Reported By Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .

01:21 CST