FCC Releases Report
September 7, 2000

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its report, "Local Telephone Competition," which discusses the competition in the market for local telecommunications services. The new information shows that competitors of the incumbent telephone companies can claim about 4 percent of the 190 million telephone lines that served end-user customers at the end of 1999. Reporting competitors indicated that about 34 percent of these lines were local loops that they own, while the remaining lines were served by means of unbundled network elements (UNEs) or services acquired from other carriers.

The number of UNEs that incumbent telephone companies reported providing to other carriers more than doubled during the six months from June through December 1999-from about 700,000 to nearly 1.5 million. Lines that incumbent companies provided to other carriers under service resale arrangements grew from 3.6 million to 4.6 million during the same period. ILECs also reported acquiring about 400,000 lines from other carriers on a resale basis.

Reporting CLECs provided at least 8 million telephone lines to their own end-user customers at the end of 1999. Over 2.8 million of these lines were served by local loop facilities that the CLECs own. The remaining lines were acquired from other carriers.
The 76 mobile telephone service providers that reported information served about 80 million subscribers.

The local service revenues of carriers that identified themselves as CLECs nearly doubled from 1998 to 1999-rising from $2.4 billion to $4.5 billion. Firms that did not identify local service as their primary line of business reported substantial growth in local service revenues. The local service revenues of all local service competitors increased from $3.5 billion to $6.3 billion. The share of local service revenues claimed by carriers competing with the ILECs rose from 3.5% in 1998 to 5.8% in 1999.

The total telecommunications revenues of all firms engaged in providing local service in competition with ILECs was about $90 billion in 1999.

The report may be downloaded at www.fcc.gov/ccb/stats.