The FCC issued its most recent Internet Access Report for the period ending 1H11, which provides detailed information on the state of broadband across both fixed and mobile. Total broadband connections were 206.1 million, consisting of 86.57 million fixed and 119.56 million mobile broadband connections.
Data for this report comes from Form 477 which gathers standardized information about subscribership to Internet access services in the fifty states, District of Columbia, and inhabited insular areas (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands). The information is reported by telephone companies, cable system operators, terrestrial wireless service providers, satellite service providers, and other facilities-based providers of advanced telecommunications capability.
Some Highlights from the report include the following:
Nationwide Availability: DSL is 84%; Cable Modem is 97% of households
1,620 Providers of High Speed Internet Access (577 FTTP)
Residential household penetration of broadband was 67%, with all 50 states achieving greater than 50% penetration.
Residential accounted for 91% of fixed broadband subscribers, and 78% of mobile broadband subscribers
The average upstream speed for fixed broadband is < 1.5Mbps, and < 768kbps for mobile broadband
Fixed Broadband Subscribers certainly enjoy significantly faster downstream speeds than mobile with 45% receiving downstream of > 10Mbps. while 69% of mobile are < 1.5Mbps
Source: Broadbandtrends
The FCC report is a great source of information, but it continues to fall short in many ways. First, it simply lags the market by too much – it will be another year before we begin to see the early impact of LTE on mobile. Second,it continues to overlook some useful information that was included in past reports such as segmentation of broadband subscribers by operator type (RBOC, IOC, CLEC, etc.).
Additionally, we believe the following granularity would also be useful to fully assess the U.S. broadband market: residential versus business by type of broadband; downstream/upstream information by type of broadband (right now they only provide downstream); average downstream/upstream speeds by state to better understand just how big the bandwidth gap is from state to state; as well as pricing by region/zip code to better understand the affordability factor.
If you are interested in more details – we’ve got it all summarized in a research note. Contact us sales@broadbandtrends.com for more information.