There continues to be increased U.S. residential demand for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service.
“The use of VoIP technology is growing rapidly and it increasingly is used to provide local telephone service,” the Federal Communications Commission said in a report released last month.
In the report covering a time period up to June 30, 2013, the Local Telephone Competition report said there was “continued growth” in the number of subscribers for interconnected VoIP and mobile telephony services. On the other hand, there was “continued decline” in the number of subscribers for traditional wired telephone services.
Specifically, there were 135 million wireline retail local phone service connections as of June 2013. They include switched access lines and interconnected VoIP subscriptions. Among them, 77 million, which is 57 percent, were residential connections and 58 million, which is 43 percent, were business connections.
In addition, 47 percent of residential customers who have a wireline voice service used VoIP. It was also shown that about 38 percent of these customers purchase VoIP service from a company that is not from whom they get incumbent phone service.
Of the 77 million wireline residential connections in June 2013, 49.3 percent of them were incumbent local exchange carriers (ILEC) switched access lines, 37.8 percent being non-ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions, 3.6 percent being non-ILEC switched access lines, and 9.3 percent being ILEC interconnected VoIP, the FCC (News - Alert) said. Of the 58 million wireline business connections, some 56 percent were ILEC switched access lines, 28.7 percent being non-ILEC switched access lines, 13.9 percent being non-ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions, and 1.4 percent being ILEC interconnected VoIP subscriptions.
In contrast, 15 percent of business voice lines use VoIP, the FCC report said. Competitive local exchange carriers had eight million business VoIP lines and ILECs sold 837,000 VoIP lines to business customers, according to a report from Network World.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control reported 41 percent of U.S. residences had only wireless telephones, such as cell phones, during the second half of 2013. And the U.S. Telecom Association (News - Alert) has predicted that between 2000 and 2015, ILECs will lose “70 percent of switched access lines and 79 percent of switched retail residential access lines” because of demand for wireless and cable options.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson