FCC Finds VoIP Subscribership Growing While Broadband Adoption Stagnates

WASHINGTON March 22,2011 – The Federal Communications Commission released a pair of annual reports on Monday showing rapid growth in adoption rates for Voice over IP, but stagnation in broadband adoption.

According to the Local Telephone Competition report, consumers are increasingly choosing to use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) rather than traditional phone services, likely as a result of the growth of broadband. The FCC found that more than a quarter of residential telephone customers now connect through VoIP.  Between June 2009 and 2010, VoIP subscribership grew by more than 20 percent. The majority of those consumers subscribe to the service via their cable providers rather than third party companies such as Vonage or Magic Jack.

The Broadband Deployment report showed the growth of fixed broadband adoption slowed to only one percent over last year’s report. Between 2006 and 2009, fixed broadband grew by an average of 5 percent annually.

The broadband data collected shows that nearly two-thirds of customers connect at speeds slower than 4 megabits per second (Mbps) – the speed that the FCC determined to be the baseline for broadband. The FCC established the benchmark in last year’s report.

Wireline connections accounts for 57.5 percent of connections while mobile wireless is 42.4 percent.

The Internet Access Services report is compiled annually from data gathered by the FCC. The goal of the report is to present standardized information about broadband subscribership throughout the nation.

The full report can be found here.