The FCC has released its annual voice telephone subscribership report, based on collected FCC Form 477 data, which covers incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs, mobile voice providers, and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers. The report, which summarizes the information collected about telephone services as of June 30, 2016, shows “continued growth in subscribership to interconnected VoIP and mobile voice services and continued decline in subscribership to traditional wired telephone services.” Among the findings highlighted in this report are the following: (1) as of June 2016, there were 62 million end-user switched access lines in service, 60 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions, and 338 million mobile subscriptions in the U.S., and 460 million retail voice subscriptions in total; (2) for a three year period ending in June 2016, VoIP subscriptions increased at a compound annual growth rate of 10%, mobile voice subscriptions increased at a compound annual growth rate of 3%, and retail switched access lines declined at 11% per year; (3) of the approximately 122 million switched access line and VoIP lines, roughly 56% were residential connections and 44% were business connections; (4) of the 66 million wireline residential connections in June 2016, 37% were ILEC switched access lines, 46% were non-ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions, 15% were ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions and 2% were non-ILEC switched access lines; and (5) ) of the 56 million wireline business connections in June 2016, 43% were ILEC switched access lines, 31% were non-ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions, 5% were ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions and 21% were non-ILEC switched access lines.
