Broadband Hits the Brakes
After Years of Double-Digit Growth, Rate of Additions Is Slowing Down
by Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 3/16/2009 2:00:00 AM
With millions of Americans already connected to the Internet at multi-Megabit-per-second speeds, broadband growth is tapering off after years of double-digit gains.
The nation's 20 largest cable and telephone providers picked up more than 5.4 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in 2008. That represents an 8.7% annual growth, but it's well off the pace of the two previous years, according to Leichtman Research Group.
Annual net broadband additions in 2008 were the fewest in the seven years that Leichtman has tracked the broadband industry. In 2007, broadband providers added 8.5 million subscribers, and the year before that peaked with 10.4 million net adds.
The group of 20 providers, which LRG estimates represents about 94% of the market, ended 2008 with 67.7 million subscribers. Cable companies held 36.9 million of those and telcos had 30.7 million.
In a separate study released last week, research firm In-Stat found that while most U.S. consumers expect to pay about the same in 2009 on broadband, pay-TV and mobile services, about 15% intend to cut back. (In-Stat and Multichannel News are both owned by Reed Business Information.)
According to LRG, the top cable companies netted 59% of the broadband additions in 2008. Telcos took the lead in the fourth quarter of 2008, though, adding about 570,000 subscribers in the period vs. 460,000 for cable.
In 2008, Comcast added about 1.3 million broadband subscribers, to end the year with more than 14.9 million. That pulled the No. 1 MSO nearly even with AT&T, which added 921,000 broadband subscribers for the year to stand at 15.1 million high-speed Internet subscribers. For LRG's counting purposes, broadband includes Internet download speeds below 1 megabit per second, such as AT&T's $19.95, 768-Kilobit-per-second service, but excludes AT&T's mobile broadband figures.
The 20 providers in LRG's study were: Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Verizon, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems, Qwest Communications International, Mediacom, Communications Insight Communications, Cable One, RCN, Bright House Networks, Suddenlink, Embarq, Windstream, CenturyTel, Frontier, FairPoint and Cincinnati Bell.
Broadband's Top 10
Top U.S. providers' high-speed Internet customers, in thousands:
| Subscribers, End of 2008 | Net Adds, 2008 | |
| SOURCE: Leichtman Research Group |
||
| AT&T | 15,077 | 921 |
| Comcast | 14,929 | 1,336 |
| Time Warner Cable | 8,727 | 847 |
| Verizon | 8,673 | 660 |
| Cox | 4,000 | 275 |
| Charter | 2,881 | 199 |
| Qwest | 2,847 | 236 |
| Cablevision | 2,455 | 173 |
| Embarq | 1,412 | 135 |
| Mediacom | 737 | 79 |
