Because Australia lies in a different time zone to Europe and North America, an Australian base allows for global continuity of work flows and efficient handover of activities, for firms servicing markets in two hemispheres. Australian businesses and households are among the most advanced and sophisticated users of information and communications technologies in the world. As an English-speaking country, with great multilingual diversity, Australia has a natural advantage as a regional base for firms looking to build their business in the global information economy. Australia offers a well-educated and highly skilled workforce for new information businesses. Australia's climate, way of life and environment are attractive to international enterprises.
Australian life is characterised by creativity and openess.
Nearly 78 percent of Internet shoppers paid for their purchases online via the Internet. There were 209,000 people employed by the information industry in 1995-96. 7000 companies were created in the computing and telecommunications sectors during the last 5 years. Australia's per capita consumption of recent innovations is rated second only to the USA, as is the sophistication of Australia's information industries. There are approximately 35,000 registered domain names in Australia, with well over 50,000 individual websites.