The top U.S. cable companies added around 1 million high-speed internet subscribers in Q1 2017, according to data released by Leichtman Research Group on Friday, which is 90 percent of the net additions for those operators in the same period in 2016.
For the overall broadband market, LRG reports the 14 largest cable and telcos in the United States, representing about 95 percent of the market, added around 960,000 net high-speed internet subscribers in the first three months of this year. The top telephone companies lost about 45,000 subscribers in Q1 2017 compared to a gain of about 10,000 broadband subscribers in the first quarter of 2016, LRG says. The firm also notes telco providers have had net broadband losses in seven of the past eight quarters.
“With the addition of nearly one million subscribers in the quarter, the top cable and telco broadband providers in the U.S. cumulatively now account for over 93.9 million subscribers in the U.S.,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst at LRG, says. “In the first quarter of 2017, the number of broadband subscribers surpassed the number of pay TV subscribers in the U.S.”
The research also points out that over the past year, there were about 2,530,000 net broadband adds, which compares to about 3,035,000 over the prior year.
