The numbers are in for the third quarter of 2015 and according to Leichtman Research Group, cable is still way out ahead of telcos in terms of broadband subscribers.
The group’s new numbers show that the top 17 cable operators and telcos in the United States jointly control 94 percent of the broadband Internet market, accounting for 89.5 million subscribers. But the cable companies in that group count almost 54.3 million subscribers, well ahead of the telcos’ 35.2 million subscribers.
The top cable companies added about 790,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter, or 134 percent of the net additions for the top cable companies in the year-ago quarter.
The top telephone companies lost about 140,000 broadband subscribers in the third quarter, compared to a gain of about 110,000 in the year-ago quarter.
AT&T’s U-verse and Verizon’s FiOS added 305,000 subscribers but those gains were offset by a net loss of 432,000 DSL subscribers.
Perhaps the starkest of Leichtman’s figures showed that, in the first three quarters of 2015, cable companies added almost 2,300,000 broadband subscribers and telcos lost almost 130,000.
“While major providers now account for nearly 90 million broadband subscribers in the US, top cable providers added subscribers at a faster pace over the past year than they did over the prior year,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, said in a statement. “Over the past year, cable companies accounted for 103 percent of the 2.93 million net broadband additions.”
Comcast lead all cable companies with almost 22.9 million broadband subscribers and AT&T lead all telcos with more than 15.8 million broadband subscribers.
The rapid growth of broadband, with higher-priced gigabit services becoming more readily available, is good news for the U.S. pay-TV industry that lost about another 300,000 subscribers in the latest quarter.