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Won 1.1 million new customers in 2011
Comcast and Time Warner Cable collectively picked up more than 1.5 million new customers in 2011, with most of the growth coming from dissatisfied DSL subscribers seeking better broadband speeds.
Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) found the eighteen largest cable and telephone providers in the US — representing about 93% of the market — acquired 3 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in 2011. Annual net broadband additions in 2011 were 88% of the total in 2010.
The top broadband providers now account for 78.6 million subscribers — with cable companies having over 44.3 million broadband subscribers, and telephone companies having over 34.3 million subscribers.
Stalled growth
Despite AT&T’s position as the second largest Internet Service Provider in the country, the company only picked up 117,000 new customers in 2011. In contrast, Time Warner Cable, with 6 million fewer customers, added almost a half-million new broadband subscriptions last year.
Frontier Communications, which made broadband a primary target for expansion, has not seen considerable growth either. The company only added just short of 38,000 new broadband customers last year, almost all getting DSL, often at speeds of 1-3Mbps.
Other key findings include:
- The top cable companies netted 75% of the broadband additions in 2011;
- The top cable companies added 2.3 million broadband subscribers in 2011 — 98% of the total net additions for the top cable companies in 2010;
- The top telephone providers added 750,000 broadband subs in 2011 — 68% of the total net additions for the top telephone companies in 2010;
- In the fourth quarter of 2011, cable and telephone providers added 765,000 broadband subscribers — with cable companies accounting for 82% of the broadband additions in the quarter.
Now serving 10.3 million
“Despite a high level of broadband penetration in the US, the top broadband providers added 88% as many subscribers in 2011 as in 2010,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “At the end of 2011, the top broadband providers in the US cumulatively had over 78.6 million subscribers, an increase of nearly 25 million over the past five years.”
Americans are increasingly treating broadband as an essential “utility” service, as fundamental as electricity or clean water.
The majority of consumers who lack the service either consider it irrelevant in their lives (a factor that increases with the age of the surveyed respondent), cannot obtain service from their provider because of their location, or cannot afford the service.
| Broadband Internet Provider | Subscribers at End of 4Q 2011 | Net Adds in 2011 |
| Cable Companies | ||
| Comcast | 18,147,000 | 1,159,000 |
| Time Warner^ | 10,344,000 | 491,000 |
| Cox* | 4,500,000 | 130,000 |
| Charter | 3,654,600 | 252,900 |
| Cablevision | 2,965,000 | 73,000 |
| Suddenlink | 951,400 | 65,100 |
| Mediacom | 851,000 | 13,000 |
| Insight^ | 550,000 | 25,500 |
| Cable ONE | 451,082 | 25,680 |
| Other Major Private Cable Companies** | 1,925,000 | 55,000 |
| Total Top Cable | 44,339,082 | 2,290,180 |
| Telephone Companies | ||
| AT&T | 16,427,000 | 117,000 |
| Verizon | 8,670,000 | 278,000 |
| CenturyLink | 5,554,000 | 238,000 |
| Frontier^^ | 1,735,000 | 37,833 |
| Windstream | 1,355,300 | 53,600 |
| FairPoint | 314,135 | 24,390 |
| Cincinnati Bell | 257,300 | 1,200 |
| Total Top Telephone Companies | 34,312,735 | 750,023 |
| Total Broadband | 78,651,817 | 3,040,203 |
Sources: The Companies and Leichtman Research Group, Inc.
* LRG estimate
** Includes LRG estimates for Bright House Networks, and RCN
^ Totals prior to Time Warner Cable’s acquisition of Insight completed on 2/29/2012
^^ LRG estimate does not include wireless subscribers
Company subscriber counts may not represent solely residential households
Totals reflect pro forma results from system sales and acquisitions
Top cable and telephone companies represent approximately 93% of all subscribers
Sure, AT&T did not pick up that many customers, but that doesn’t mean the U-verse bundle failed. It’s great having up to four services (phone, tv, internet, and a wireless mobile) under one company…keeps things organized. The service might be a little pricey, but with a AT&T Uverse coupon, the savings are pretty large. Cheers!
U-verse is certainly better than AT&T’s DSL, but it’s typical AT&T — don’t spend the money to really upgrade your network like Verizon did with FiOS, but rather do it on the cheap and be left with something the cable companies can still handily beat.
Cable simply provides a better service than Cincinnati Bell in the outlying areas. Cincinnati Bell has a congestion problem that they rarely admit to. When the kids get home from school, and the adults get home from work, their entire network nearly fails every single day. When you call them for support, they act like they have never heard of this before; but when you talk to your friends and neighbors, they all know about it. We would rather share a line with 9 other people that is guaranteed to work, than have our own “dedicated” pipe into a bottleneck… Read more »