The FCC released a report summarizing information about U.S. Internet access connections over 200 kilobits per second (kbps) in at least one direction as of December 31, 2012. The report is based on information collected by FCC Form 477. The report tracks changes at the state and national level in the number of subscribers to Internet access service in 72 different combinations of speed tiers.
According to the Report:
- Internet connections overall are growing. The number of connections over 200 kbps in at least one direction increased by 14% year-over-year to nearly 262 million.
- At year-end 2012, there were almost 65 million fixed and 64 million mobile connections with downstream speeds at or above 3 Mbps and upstream speeds at or above 768 kbps, as compared to 51 million fixed and 31 million mobile connections a year earlier.
- The number of connections with downstream speeds of at least 10 Mbps increased by 35% over December 2011, to 60 million connections.
- Growth is particularly high in mobile Internet subscriptions. The number of mobile subscriptions with speeds over 200 kbps in at least one direction grew to more than 169 million – up 19% from December 2011. The number of fixed-location connections at speeds over 200 kbps in at least one direction increased by 5% year-over-year to nearly 93 million.
- Between December 2002 and December 2012, total (business and residential) reportable fixed location connections grew from 19 million connections to 93 million connections – at a compound annual growth rate of 17% per year.
- Over the same ten-year period, residential fixed-location connections grew from 17 million connections to 84 million connections – also at a compound annual growth rate of 17% per year.
- Residential fixed-location Internet access connections over 200 kbps in at least one direction increased by 5% between December 2011 and December 2012, to 84 million.
- Reported residential mobile wireless service subscribers with mobile devices and data plans for full Internet access increased by 24%, to 131 million, between December 2011 and December 2012.
- The reported data show a 18% annual increase in the number of residential fixed-location connections that are at least 6 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream (from 32.3 million to 38.1 million) and a 20% annual increase in the number of connections that are at least 10 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps upstream (from 31.6 million to 38.0 million).
The full report is available here: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-324884A1.pdf
