FCC Local Telephone Competition Report Includes VoIP Data for First Time

The Federal Communications Commission released its local telephone competition report including, for the first time, comprehensive information about subscribership to interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.

Interconnected VoIP service represents an important and rapidly growing part of the U.S. voice service market and the new data will provide the Commission with a comprehensive picture of that market going forward. Interconnected VoIP service enables voice communications over a broadband connection and allows users both to receive calls from, and place calls to, the public switched telephone network, like traditional phone service. Providers of the service include companies like Vonage as well as cable and telephone companies that own their own networks.

Report highlights include:

• At year-end 2008, there were 141 million traditional switched access lines in service and 21 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions in the United States, or about 162 million wireline retail local telephone service connections in total. Of these, 97 million were residential connections and 65 million were business connections.
• Of the 162 million total connections, 48% were residential switched access lines, 39% were business switched access lines, 12% were residential VoIP subscriptions, and 1% were business VoIP subscriptions.
• Of the 162 million total connections, 45% were residential lines and 28% were business lines owned by incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), while 15% provided non-ILEC residential service, and 12% provided non-ILEC business service.
• Of the 97 million wireline residential connections, 74.5% were ILEC switched access lines, 19.5% were non-ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions, 5.8% were non-ILEC switched access lines, and 0.3% were ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions.
• Of the 65 million wireline business connections, 70.1% were ILEC switched access lines, 26.8% were non-ILEC switched access lines, 2.7% were non-ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions, and 0.4% were ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions.