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Broadband Internet Statistics

Tracking The Growth Of Broadband Internet Usage
Last Updated: March 11th, 2009

Although the number of broadband users continues to grow in the U.S., statistics show that over the last two years, that growth has been slowing down. The slowdown in growth for broadband has been attributed mainly to the slowing U.S. economy. New homes have been one of the major sources for broadband growth, and with the housing meltdown of 2008, broadband growth was sure to follow.

There are two additional reasons that broadband growth is slowing. The first is market penetration. With so many users already on either DSL or cable, the amount of new broadband users was bound to slowdown at some point in time. The other contributor is that another form of high speed Internet, wireless, is just now taking off.

 

Comparing DSL Growth To Cable

The major cable and telephone (DSL) companies added 5.4 million new subscribers in 2008, which is down considerably from the 8.5 million they added in 2007. The total number of broadband subscribers in the U.S. as of the end of 2008, is close to 68 million. It seems that cable Internet has become the preferred form of high speed Internet access for residential use:

  • Cable companies: 36.9 million
  • Telephone companies: 30.7 million

In 2008, cable companies added 3.2 million new subscribers, outpacing their primary form of competition from the major telephone companies. DSL / fiber optic providers only added 2.2 million accounts during the same time period, but actually outpaced cable in the fourth quarter of 2008. This might indicate that residential users are starting to choose fiber optic packages, such as Verizon's FiOS, over cable.

 

Statistics As Of December 31st, 2008

The following two charts* display both the total number of broadband subscribers at the end of 2008, as well as net adds during that same year:

Cable Companies Total Subscribers Net Adds In 2008
Comcast 14,929,000 1,336,000
Time Warner 8,727,000 847,000
Cox 4,000,000 275,000
Charter 2,881,100 198,800
Cablevision 2,455,000 173,000
Mediacom 737,000 79,000
Insight 458,500 72,500
Cable ONE 372,887 31,853
RCN 302,000 17,000
Other Cable 2,075,000 175,000
Telephone Companies Total Subscribers Net Adds In 2008
AT&T 15,077,000 921,000
Verizon 8,673,000 660,000
Qwest 2,847,000 236,000
Embarq 1,412,000 135,000
Windstream 978,800 107,400
CenturyTel 641,000 86,000
Frontier 579,943 57,098
Other Telephone 528,560 16,483

* Source for statistics: Leichtman Research Group, Inc.

The figures above represent close to 95% of the high speed Internet market. The growth in 2008 is actually the smallest for broadband in the last seven years, and this slowdown in new broadband subscribers is continuing into the first quarter of 2009.

Over the course of the next couple of years, wireless Internet is going to figure into the continuing evolution of broadband in a big way. For now, it remains a minor player in overall market share. For example, Clearwire, the company that is currently leading the way for deployment of WiMax 4G wireless Internet service, only had 475,000 subscribers at the end of 2009, and they were still growing very slowing in the 4th quarter. Still, you can expect to see the number of broadband wireless Internet subscribers to grow into the millions by the end of 2009 and 2010.

 
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