The FCC’s International Bureau today released its annual year-end circuit status report for U.S.-international facilities-based common carriers. The year-end 2008 report shows that the use of U.S.-international facilities for international telephone calls, private line services and other services from the United States grew by 25 percent from 2007 to 2008.
The report relies on information provided by U.S.-international facilities-based common carriers and covers U.S. undersea cables, satellites and terrestrial links. It identifies the activated (in-service) and idle (available, but not in-service) circuits for each international point as of December 31, 2008. Additionally, for purposes of comparison, this report incorporates historical data from the 2005-2007 circuit status reports.
Overall, the reported number of activated 64 Kbps equivalent circuits grew by 25 percent in 2008. At year-end 2008, the reported number of activated 64 Kbps equivalent circuits totaled 9.6 million circuits as compared to the revised 7.7 million circuits at year-end 2007.
- By service type: International Message Telephone Service (IMTS) accounted for 8.7 percent of the total circuits used; International Private Line Services accounted for 41.4 percent of total circuits; and approximately 49.9 percent of total circuits were used for services other than traditional private line services (including data services).
- By transmission type: Undersea cables accounted for 82.8 percent of the overall active transmission capacity; terrestrial links accounted for 17.1 percent; and satellite accounted for 0.1 percent.
- The top 30 destinations among all international routes accounted for 97 percent of the total activated circuits. The percentage of idle circuits (as compared to the total circuit capacity, active and idle) slightly increased from 41.8 percent in 2007 to 43.0 percent in 2008.