USA - common carriers report

FCC Releases Statistics of Common Carriers Report for 2006
see also FCC report

The FCC has announced the release of its Statistics of Communications Common Carriers report for 2006. The 250-page report consists of five sections including general information on industry structure, financial and operating data relating to telephone carriers, data on international communications, historical financial and operating statistics, and data on industry trends. The report includes data from around 1,300 Incumbent Local telephone Exchange Companies (ILECs) including 27 large ILECs and 29 mid sized ILECs accounting for 90% of local lines. Some 1,100 companies providing long distance services also provide data to the report while the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA), and the United States Telecom Association (USTA) also provide data for the report.

Significance: The report notes that basic raw data is made available to the public through the ARMIS when it is received and this is current to 2007. The statistical summary report here is only released after "data has been checked, inquiries on questionable items sent to the carriers, corrected submissions received, and the industry tables compiled". International data is not received until some 10 months after the end of the year being reported. There is therefore a significant delay with the current report providing analysis of domestic data to the end of 2006 and international data only to the end of 2005. However, the report does summarise detailed data such as the amount of cable (metallic or fibre, lit or dark) buried, aerial, underground and intra-building in each state, central office and remote switches, revenue by provider and service, minutes of use, employees, and equipment holdings with the ARMIS system facilitating access to more current specific data sets.