Q3 Sees Boom in Broadband, Cable Subscriptions

Telephone and cable Internet access providers saw a jump in Q3 of approximately 2.5 million more broadband subscribers, according to new research. Cable and telephone service providers account for roughly 94% of all U.S. subscribers.

by Kristina Knight

According to a report from Leichtman Research Group, the top 20 cable and phone access points account for more than 50 million subscribers. Cable has roughly 28.1 million broadband subscribers while telephone access points account for about 22.7 million DSL and broadband subs.

Telephone access providers saw the largest growth in Q3 with 1.33 million (53%) new additions. Phone companies have added more than cable in the last eight quarters, according to the report. There have been 7.7 million new broadband subscribers in Q1, Q2 and Q3 2006.

Comcast (536,000), Time Warner (251,000), Cox (75,000), Charter (88,100) and Cablevision (72,438) had the largest increase in cable broadband service according to the report. For phone companies, AT&T (374,000), Verizon (448,000), Bell South (176,000), Qwest (175,000) and Embarq (84,000) saw the highest subscriber growth.

The report feeds into other reports that broadband subscriber rates will reach 50% of U.S. homes by the end of 2007. In addition to broadband services, new and old broadband subscribers are expected to jump to other “value-added” services like VoIP, IPTV and paid audio and video content. A study from eMarketer indicates that roughly 40% broadband Internet households will also be VoIP households by 2010.