The bar chart illustrates the total number of minutes (in billions) of local, national/international, and mobile telephone calls in Australia between 2001 and 2008.
Overall, local calls accounted for the largest share of minutes throughout the period, peaking in 2005 before declining, while both national/international and mobile calls rose steadily. Mobile calls, in particular, saw the most dramatic increase, although they remained the least used.
Local call minutes began at 72 billion in 2001 and climbed to a peak of 90 billion in 2005. However, they then dropped by the same amount to 72 billion by 2008, ending the period at the same level as in the beginning.
National and international calls ranked second, increasing gradually from 38 billion minutes in 2001 to 61 billion in 2008 without any falls. Mobile calls, which were used the least in 2001 at just 2 billion minutes, experienced the sharpest growth, rising more than twenty-fold to reach 46 billion minutes by the end of the period. This growth rate far outpaced that of the other two categories.