U.S. Telephone Companies' Operating Statistics, 1991-2007

The FCC's on-line Automated Reporting Management Information System (ARMIS) provides U.S. incumbent telephone company data from the year 1991. These data provide useful comparative data for evaluating price-cap tariff filings. The Telco Operating Statistics (TOS) dataset is an unofficial, non-authoritative compilation of ARMIS data on telephone company line counts and call volumes. TOS contains all ARMIS reporting telephone companies, by state and study area, from FCC ARMIS Report 43-08, the following tables:

TOS is set-up as a long-form table convenient for analysis with a database program. It is a tab-delimited text file (telco-operating-statistics.txt) containing the following fields:

Telco Operating Statistics (TOS) Dataset Description
field name
field description
table
source table in FCC Report 43-08
cosa
company service area code
company
company name
row
source table row number
area
geographic area (usually a state)
category
description of statistic (includes column code)
year
calendar year of the statistic
value
value of the statistic

Here are the statistics (category field) included in the TOS:

table
category
column
2
Main Access Lines (cc)
cc
2
PBX & Centrex Trunks (cd)
cd
2
Centrex Extensions (ce)
ce
2
Other Switched Access Lines (ci)
ci
2
Total Switched Access Lines (cj)
cj
2
Central Office Switches Excluding Remote Switches (ck)
ck
2
Remote Switches (cl)
cl
2
Total Central Office Switches (cm)
cm
2
Basic Rate ISDN Control Channels (cn)
cn
2
Primary Rate ISDN Control Channels (co)
co
4
Local Calls (ec)
ec
4
IntraLATA Toll Calls Completed (Originating) (ed)
ed
4
InterLATA Toll Calls Completed (Originating): Interstate (ee)
ee
4
InterLATA Toll Calls Completed (Originating): Intrastate (ef)
ef
4
InterLATA Toll Calls Completed (Originating): Total (eg)
eg
4
InterLATA Billed Access Minutes (Originating & Terminating): Interstate (eh)
eh
4
InterLATA Billed Access Minutes (Originating & Terminating): Intrastate (ei)
ei
4
InterLATA Billed Access Minutes (Originating & Terminating): Total (ej)
ej
3
Business Switched Access Lines - Single Line (fc)
fc
3
Multiline Business Switched Access Lines - Other than Payphone Lines (fd)
fd
3
Multiline Business Switched Access Lines - Payphone Lines (fe)
fe
3
Residential Switched Access Lines - Lifeline (ff)
ff
3
Residential Switched Access Lines - Non-Lifeline - Primary (fg)
fg
3
Residential Switched Access Lines - Non-Lifeline - Non-Primary (fh)
fh
3
Total Switched Access Lines (fi)
fi
3
Special Access Lines (Non-Switched): Analog (4 kHz or Equiv.) (fj)
fj
3
Special Access Lines (Non-Switched): Digital (64 kbps or Equiv.) (fk)
fk
3
Total Access Lines (Switched & Special) (fl)
fl
3
Local Private Lines (fm)
fm
2
submission number

3
submission number

4
submission number

For those who prefer to analyze large datasets with spreadsheets (not recommended), an intermediate, spreadsheet form of TOS is also available.

Telephone companies included in TOS are local-exchange telephone companies providing service prior to 1996 (incumbent LECs, abbreviated as ILECs) meeting the FCC reporting requirements for ARMIS report 43-08: revenue greater than a revenue threshold that was $100 million in 1992 and $138 million in 2007.

The telephone operating companies, by name and cosa, that are included in TOS are listed in cosa-armis.txt. It is a tab-delimited text file with the fields name, cosa, and cosa-group. The additional field cosa-group provides an alternate cosa for grouping related records. Joining with TOS on cosa and selecting on cosa-group provides a convenient way to select cosa sets from the TOS. Here's a larger list of cosa's and associated operating company names. Official lists are included in ARMIS documentation, such as this list for 2007.

NECA data provide comprehensive reporting of ILECs, but somewhat different data. The NECA data (Universal Service Fund Data: NECA Study Results) include counts of loops (category 1.3 loops, 47 CFR 36.154). These loop-count data, compared against the ARMIS total switched access lines, provide estimates of the coverage of ARMIS reporting companies among all ILECs. Here's tab-delimited text file of NECA loops for 2007, by cosa study-area / state, compiled from the NECA filing for 2008 (submitted in 2009). The same data, organized slightly differently, appears in the Federal-State Joint Board Monitoring Reports, Table 3.34.

For official definitions of the statistics reported and documentation of changes in company service areas in the TOS, see the ARMIS data documentation. Note that statistics of calls and minutes are reported in thousands. Line counts in ARMIS are not exactly the same as category 1.3 loops reported through NECA. Revisions in ARMIS data may account for small discrepancies between ARMIS data and statistics published in the FCC's Statistics of Communications Common Carriers.

Footnotes associated with the tables provide some additional relevant information about particular statistics. The TOS-footnotes dataset contains the footnotes for the tables in TOS. The ARMIS system outputs longer footnotes as multiple records grouped by a sequence number. That's somewhat inconvenient for searching and selecting relevant footnotes. TOS-footnotes contains a field, ftjoin, that contains a concatenation of all footnote text lines for each footnote. Hence looking at the ftjoin field in sequence number 1 footnotes provides the full footnote text for all footnotes.

TOS-footnotes (TOS-footnotes.txt) is a tab-delimited text file with the following fields:

TOS-Footnote Dataset Description
field name
field description
table-source
table number of table to which the footnote is attached (added variable)
cosa
company study area code
year
year of statistics to which footnote refers
period
not relevant to this annual data
table
table to which footnote applies (ZZZZ means all tables)
row
table row to which footnote applies
column
table column to which footnote applies (listed in parentheses at end of category name)
footnote number
identifies footnote along with cosa / year / table
sequence
record sequence number for multiline footnotes
footnote
footnote text
ftjoin
footnote text, concatenated (see above)

The TOS and related datasets should be verified and validated as appropriate for your particular use. They are unofficial, non-authoritative compilations provided without warranty of any sort. All the data in the TOS and related datasets are publicly available from the FCC's website.

Additional relevant public resources

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