Back at the FCC: Carrier Voice Revenue is Shrinking

Last week, the FCC released its annual report on carrier revenue based on Form 499 filings, this blog’s favorite regulatory worksheet.

And those numbers confirm what we already knew: revenue from voice—both mobile and fixed line—has already plateaued and is coming down fast.

The FCC reported that the total 2009 telecom revenue pot from both end-users and carriers providing services to other carriers dropped to $281 billion from 2008’s $297 billion.

The 2010 FCC numbers, while preliminary, all point to the inevitable and long-predicted slide as the industry transitions to data services.

What’s in store for 2010, voice revenue-wise? The FCC is expecting the voice kitty to shrink even further, to $274 billion.

What about our booming mobile services? If we look at  just the telephony part, that too is also trending downward. In 2009 mobile telephony slid to $118 billion, shedding $6 billion from 2008, and in 2010, mobile phone calling is expected to drop to $116 billion.

The bright spot is total mobile revenue, which includes data and voice: 2009’s $187 billion in revenue is holding steady from 2008.  Mobile data services is making up for declining mobile call monies, but just barely.

As has been noted many times in this blog, expect carriers and cable cable companies to introduce more granular billing or more complicated tiered billing that will start squeezing additional $s out of  cord-cutting, email, IM, and Twitter addicted subscribers.

In throwing around numbers with billions appended to them, it’s easy to forget that there’s still incredible amounts of moolah in communications.

These huge potential markets will continue to lure new social start ups, conferencing startups, messaging startups, business VoIP startups, etc.