VoIP Subscriptions Jump 22 Percent, FCC Reports
Interconnected VoIP subscriptions jumped 22 percent to 26 million in 2009, while the number of switched access lines fell 10 percent to 127 million, the FCC said Wednesday in a report on local telephone competition. The number of wireline retail connections fell by 6 percent to 153 million in 2009, the report said. The report may show a decline in the total number of wirelines, but VoIP still relies on wireline broadband connections and many wireless services still rely on wireline facilities, said a spokeswoman for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Policymakers “must make sure that high-cost support mechanisms are available to support the deployment and maintenance of critical network facilities,” she said.
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About 84 percent of interconnected VoIP subscribers were plugged in through broadband, Wednesday’s report found. Of those broadband bundles, 87 percent came over cable modems, 13 percent through fiber to the home, DSL or other wireline, and less than 1 percent through fixed wireless or other connections, the FCC reported. The commission is expected to take up Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation overhauls at its February meeting (CD Dec 1 p1). Chairman Julius Genachowski confirmed Wednesday that the issues “are so integrated that I'm not sure we can solve one without the other.” The commission has already paved the way to use universal service money to support broadband deployment (CD Jan 4 p2). But many industry officials are skeptical that the chairman can thread the needle without rancor. Whatever plan is adopted, important players will lose out on lots of money, a CLEC attorney said.
Meanwhile, VoIP providers are fighting state and federal regulations. Their work has been made harder by last fall’s FCC order requiring VoIP providers to pay into state and federal universal service funds (CD Nov 10 p7). It’s no surprise that VoIP has grown so much -- and it has “thrived with limited federal regulation,” Voice on the Net Coalition Executive Director Glenn Richards told us Wednesday. “Hopefully, the FCC and the state utility commissions will refrain from adopting regulatory policies that could slow the adoption of interconnected VoIP."
The new FCC report also found that nearly 70 percent of the nation’s 91 million wireline residential connections belonged to ILECs, almost 24 percent were non-ILEC interconnected VoIP, about 6 percent were non-ILEC switched access lines, and a little more than 1 percent were ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions. Of the 62 million wireline business connections, 68 percent were ILEC switched access lines, more than 26 percent were non-ILEC switched access lines, nearly 5 percent were non-ILEC VoIP subscriptions and 1 percent were ILEC VoIP subscriptions.