The government must meet the modern demands of Australians by including mobile broadband as a major part of its National Broadband Network policy and this would be possible with “little or no increase in costs”, a new report has found.

The report, Superfast broadband – the future is in your hands, showed dramatically increased mobile broadband usage among internet-using Australians compared to when the NBN was first announced in 2009. It recommended that the government make NBN infrastructure available to mobile internet to accommodate this.

In 2012, about 47% of Australian internet users accessed the internet via a mobile phone, the report said.

The independent report, conducted by the McKell Institute, recommended the upgrading of Australia’s broadband infrastructure, and to “embrace the convergence of the full opportunities of fixed and mobile technology convergence”.

It said that delivery of better mobile services could be made without changes to the current scope of the NBN, and described mobile services as an “ideal complement” to the NBN.

“The role that NBN can play in mobiles will not require a complicated reconfiguration of the NBN or its rollout,” it said.

“By responding to the boom in mobile broadband NBN Co may be in a position to generate substantially more benefit for the nation with little or no increase in its costs.”

Bill Morrow, CEO of Vodafone, which commissioned the report, also pushed for the end of Telstra’s “monopoly”, saying that if Telstra-controlled technology was opened up to competitors, rural and regional Australians could have better access to high-speed internet, sooner.

The author of the report, Michael Gordon-Smith, said consumers did not really care how the technology worked – they just wanted it to work.

“The general point is that wireless or mobile … the technological developments mean the capacity to connect without wires anyhow is the important feature,” Gordon-Smith said.

“It’s no longer sensible to think of mobile as utterly separated from fixed line networks as though those are two different things. Therefore the work that the NBN is doing is able to support the delivery of broadband through mobile as it is able to through fixed line.”

Morrow said a fixed wireless tower could serve multiple purposes. Currently a mobile device might switch between several internet connections – and data plans – as a user moved from their home wireless connection to a 3G or 4G connection outside. Greater mobile wireless through the NBN could allow for an unbroken connection or a single account.

“I think there will be cases where you want a frequency dedicated for a fixed non-mobile application and yet other frequencies on that same tower that will be used for mobility aspects of it,” Morrow said.

He repeated calls by Vodafone for the government to free up access to fixed wireless towers so the investment into building infrastructure in rural and regional areas could be shared among internet providers. He told Guardian Australia this would see faster mobile internet reach Australians living outside the cities sooner.

“I can put up a brand new tower here in the city and justify it because there’s so many people around. It’s the same concept – if we put up one out there and share the cost of that it means I can put out many more with fewer customers and still justify the economic expense,” he said.

The cost of building the tower was negligible. Morrow said the biggest economic constraint was the cost of backhaul – the high-speed connection between the internet provider and the core network, before they passed it on to customers through their own service – which was generally owned by Telstra.

“In order to keep the tower up and running, I’ve got to pay these backhaul costs to Telstra,” said Morrow, who added that because of the lack of competition, these costs were four times more than anywhere in Europe or the US.

Parliamentary secretary to the minister for communications, Paul Fletcher, said in his introduction at the report’s launch that while the report was commissioned by Vodafone – not the government – its central thesis “certainly makes sense”.

“Wherever possible, the Coalition will ensure that NBN Co assets such as towers or backhaul will be made available to carriers to facilitate improved services. The Coalition will be mindful of competition as well as broadband policy objectives in considering opportunities to alter the fixed wireless rollout,” he said.