Landline Communications

Landline telephone (also known as fixed line, wireline, or main line) services are provided using telephones that use a metal wire telephone line for transmission, unlike mobile wireless services which use radio waves for transmission.

While the number of landlines worldwide has steadily declined worldwide in recent years, due to the convenience offered by wireless and internet-based alternatives, in 2013 there were still over 1.1 billion landlines in service worldwide.

In the United States, to stimulate competition, wireline telephone companies were historically broken into local exchange carriers, or LECs, and long distance / interexchange carriers, or IXCs. Local exchange carriers (LECs) were further segmented as either incumbent (ILECs) are competitive (CLECs). ILECs were usually the original, monopoly LEC in a given area and received different regulatory treatment than the newer CLECs. A similar approach has been taken in other countries as well, including Canada, Japan, and Germany.

• Of the 146 million US wireline retail local telephone service connections in June 2011, 84 million (58%) were residential connections and 62 million (42%) were business connections.
• At the end of 2010, in the US, the ILECs had about 40.2 million broadband connections; the CLECs, 4.3 million, and the cable companies had 44.4 million.
• By 2020 it is estimated that broadband penetration in the US will be 84% of the addressable market, with ILECs and CLECs controlling about 45%, cable companies controlling 40% and wireless providers grabbing just over 14%.

The Landline industry data model set consists of Enterprise, Business Area, and Data Warehouse logical data models developed to address the integrated data and reporting requirements for companies operating in the landline voice and data communications industry including:

The Landline industry models can seamless integrate with other ADRM Software communications industry offerings such as the CDMA Wireless, GSM / 3G / 4G Wireless, Internet and Data Services, and Television data model sets to provide enhanced data architecture coverage across multiple lines of business.