Mobile Spurs Internet Access Growth, FCC Reports; VoIP, Mobile Voice Up, Wireline Voice Down

U.S. internet access connections rose 6 percent in 2016 to 376 million, the FCC reported in an item in Thursday's Daily Digest, counting connections of more than 200 kbps. Mobile internet connections grew 7 percent to 270 million and fixed connections grew 3 percent to 106 million. Among fixed connections, 23.2 percent had download speeds of at least 100 Mbps, 36.8 percent had between 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps, 22.1 percent had between 10 Mbps and 25 Mbps, 14.2 percent had between 3 Mbps and 10 Mbps, and 3.7 percent had less than 3 Mbps. There were 463 million retail voice phone service connections, also based on Form 477 data: 341 million mobile wireless (up from 335 million in 2015), 63 million wireline interconnected VoIP (up from 59 million) and 58 million wireline switched access (down from 65 million), the agency reported. Fifty-three percent of wireline connections were residential, and 58 million were served by ILECs (mostly by switched access), 63 million by others (mostly by interconnected VoIP).