Floridians Have Cut Landlines in Half Since 2011

Florida residents and businesses are continuing to get rid of traditional telephone landlines as they rely on wireless phones and internet technology, according to a state report released Friday.

The report, produced annually by the Florida Public Service Commission, said Florida had about 3.3 million traditional wirelines in December 2015, down from about 3.8 million a year earlier. The numbers are part of a steady trend. For example, residents and businesses had about 6.1 million traditional lines in 2011.

“While residential lines declined an additional 14 percent in 2015, business line declines were 15 percent. Much of this decline can continue to be attributed to the transition to Voice over Internet Protocol and wireless-only services,” the report states. “For the first time, CenturyLink became Florida’s largest wireline residential provider by surpassing
AT&T in the number of residential wireline access lines provided. This may be a result of CenturyLink’s ability to mitigate its decline in residential access lines or because it serves rural areas with less competition. Over the past four years, CenturyLink has experienced an average six percent decline per year in residential access lines, while AT&T and Verizon have both averaged a 22 percent decline per year for the same period.”

The report said there were an estimated 19.9 million wireless phones in Florida as of December 2014, citing Federal Communications Commission figures. There are an estimated 19.9 million wireless handsets in Florida, and an additional 3.7 million cable Voice over Internet Protocol subscribers. Over 67 percent of Florida households have a broadband connection with download speeds of at least 3 megabits per second.

“The Federal Communications Commission-reported telephone penetration rate of 94.8 percent for Florida suggests that the overwhelming majority of Florida residents are able to afford telephone service,” the report concludes. “The number and variety of competitive choices among all types of service providers suggest that competition is having a positive impact on the telecommunications market in Florida.”

See the full report below.

–FlaglerLive and News Service of Florida

Competition in the Telecommunications Industry (2016)

Click to access psc-telecommunications-report.pdf