Australians' hunger for data continues to grow, with the volume of total downloads in the final quarter of 2014 exceeding an exabyte - or 1 million terabytes - for the first time.

Data released on Tuesday from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show Australians downloaded 1.15EB of data in the three months to December 2014, an increase of 33 per cent on the same period in 2013.

Australian internet users are downloading like crazy. Credit:Jim Rice

Australians are also connecting faster, with the number of internet subscribers with connections at advertised speeds of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) or higher - faster than the maximum speeds available on ADSL2+ - rising 11 per cent to 2.34 million.

With the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) continuing throughout the year, super-fast fibre was the fastest growing type of internet connection, soaring 94 per cent in the year to 324,000 connections.