The FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau has released reports on the status of Internet access and voice telephone services as of June 30, 2015. The first report summarizes information about U.S. Internet access connections over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction, as reported on FCC Form 477. As expected, the report shows that the number of overall Internet connections in the U.S. is continuing to grow—connections increased by 9% to 342 million—and both fixed and mobile services are shifting to higher speeds. Most of the growth in total Internet connections is attributable to increased mobile Internet access subscribership. The number of mobile Internet connections increased 12% year-over-year to 242 million in June 2015, while the number of fixed connections grew to 100 million – up 4% from June 2014.
The second report summarizes the information collected about telephone services on FCC Form 477. It demonstrates continued growth in subscribership to interconnected VoIP and mobile voice services and continued decline in subscribership to traditional wired telephone services. In June 2015, there were 68 million end-user switched access lines in service, 57 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions, and 326 million mobile subscriptions in the United States, or 451 million retail voice telephone service connections in total. Since June 2012, interconnected VoIP subscriptions increased at a compound annual growth rate of 13%, mobile voice subscriptions increased at a compound annual growth rate of 3%, and retail switched access lines declined at 13% per year.
