High Speed Services for Internet Access (As of 06/30/07)

High-Speed Services for Internet Access: Status as of June 30, 2007 Industry Analysis and Technology Division Wireline Competition Bureau March 2008 This report is available for reference in the FCC’s Reference Information Center, Courtyard Level, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC. Copies may be purchased by contacting Best Copy and Printing, Inc., 445 12th Street, SW, Room CY-B402, Washington, DC 20554, telephone (800) 378-3160, or via their website at www.bcpiweb.com. The report can also be downloaded from the Wireline Competition Bureau Statistical Reports Internet site at www.fcc.gov/wcb/stats. 1High-Speed Services for Internet Access: Status as of June 30, 2007 Congress directed the Commission and the states, in section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, to encourage deployment of advanced telecommunications capability in the United States on a reasonable and timely basis.1 To assist in its evaluation of such deployment, the Commission instituted a formal data collection program (FCC Form 477) to gather standardized information about subscribership to high-speed services, including advanced services, from wireline telephone companies, cable system operators, terrestrial wireless service providers, satellite service providers, and any other facilities-based providers of advanced telecommunications capability.2 We summarize here information from the sixteenth semi-annual data collection, thereby presenting a snapshot of subscribership as of June 30, 2007.3 High-speed lines connecting homes and businesses to the Internet increased by 22% during the first half of 2007, from 82.8 million to 100.9 million lines in service, following a 27% increase, from 65.3 million to 82.8 million lines, during the second half of 2006. For the full twelve-month period ending June 30, 2007, high-speed lines increased by 55% (or 35.7 million lines). The presence of high-speed service subscribers was reported in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, and in over 99% of the Zip Codes in the United States. Twice a year, all facilities-based providers of high-speed connections to end users are required to report to the Commission basic information about their service offerings and types of customers.4 Prior to June 2005, providers with fewer than 250 high-speed lines (or wireless 1 See §706, Pub.L. 104-104, Title VII, Feb. 8, 1996, 110 Stat. 153, reproduced in the notes under 47 U.S.C. § 157. We use the term “high-speed” to describe services that provide the subscriber with transmissions at a speed in excess of 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction. “Advanced services,” which provide the subscriber with transmission speeds in excess of 200 kbps in each direction, are a subset of high-speed services. 2 Local Competition and Broadband Reporting, CC Docket No. 99-301, Report and Order, 15 FCC Rcd 7717 (2000); Local Telephone Competition and Broadband Reporting, WC Docket No. 04-141, Report and Order, 19 FCC Rcd 22340 (2004). During this data gathering program, qualifying entities file FCC Form 477 each year on March 1 (reporting data for the preceding December 31) and September 1 (reporting data for June 30 of the same year). The first data collected by Form 477 were data as of December 31, 1999. An updated Form 477, and instructions for that particular form, for each specific round of the data collection may be downloaded from the FCC Forms website at www.fcc.gov/formpage.html. 3 Statistical summaries of the earlier Form 477 data collections appeared in Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, CC Docket No. 98-146, Second Report, 15 FCC Rcd 20913 (2000) (Second 706 Report), available at www.fcc.gov/broadband/706.html, and in previous releases of the High-Speed Services for Internet Access report, available at www.fcc.gov/wcb/stats. 4 The terms “broadband connections” (which is used as a synonym for “high-speed connections” in the Form 477 program) and “facilities-based provider” are defined on the first page of the Form 477 instructions that are available at www.fcc.gov/formpage.html, and the term “end users” is defined on the third page. Facilities-based providers report information about high-speed connections they provide directly to their own end-user customers and also high-speed connections they provide to Internet Service Providers for resale to end users. 2channels) in service in a particular state were not required to report data for that state.5 Small providers of high-speed connections, many of whom serve rural areas with relatively small populations, were therefore underrepresented in the earlier data. Including these providers resulted in a substantial one-time increase in the number of hol