On Friday, the Federal Communications Commission released new data on high-speed connections to the Internet in the United States. Defining advanced services lines as connections that deliver services at speeds exceeding 200 kbps in both directions, the FCC finds that: 1) these lines increased by 15% during the second half of 2007, from 69.6 million to 80.2 million lines; 2) of the 80.2 million advanced services lines reported as of December 31, 2007, 56.4% were at least 2.5 mbps in the faster direction and 43.5% were slower than 2.5 mbps in the faster direction; 3) of the 80.2 million advanced services lines, 69.1 million served primarily residential end users. Cable modem service represented 50.7% of these lines while 32.6% were ADSL connections, 0.1% were SDSL or traditional wireline connections, 2.4% were fiber connections to the end user premises, and 14.1% used other types of technology including satellite, terrestrial fixed or mobile wireless (on a licensed or unlicensed basis), and electric power line.
