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Cable Companies Dominating Telcos Due to Sagging DSL Speeds

Cable continues to absolutely dominate fiber and DSL providers in the United States. According to the latest quarterly broadband subscriber data by Leichtman Research, the top cable companies netted 122% of the broadband additions last year -- compared to 106% in 2015, and 89% in 2014. More specifically, the top cable companies added 3.3 million broadband subscribers in 2016 -- on par with gains made in 2015, and the most net adds in any year since 2007. In contrast telcos saw a net loss of about 600,000 subscribers in 2016 -- compared to a loss of about 185,000 subscribers in 2015.

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Why such a severe beating for telcos? Users are tired of slow DSL speeds, and many of these companies are frankly no longer really interested in being in the fixed-line residential broadband business (especially in rural areas or less affluent cities) anyway.

Across huge swaths of the country, AT&T and Verizon are simply refusing to upgrade unwanted DSL customers, who are flocking to cable for faster speeds. Elsewhere, companies like CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream like to pay lip service to their cutting edge networks, while ignoring that the majority of their customers still can't get the FCC's base definition of broadband: 25 Mbps.

Overall growth continues to slow as the market saturates (read: if you want a broadband connection, you have one unless you can't afford it). Annual net broadband additions in 2016 were 87% of the 3.1 million net adds in 2015.

"The top cable and Telco broadband providers in the US cumulatively now account for nearly 92.9 million subscribers in the US, and the industry continues to grow," said Bruce Leichtman "The top broadband providers added nearly 5.8 million net broadband subscribers over the past two years, with cable companies accounting for about 6.6 million net adds."

Most recommended from 27 comments



Donut
join:2005-06-27
Romulus, MI
·Comcast XFINITY
Netgear CM1000
Synology RT2600ac

3 recommendations

Donut

Member

Duh

When AT&T can only give me 6 Mbps down but Comcast can give me 75Mbps down. Which would you choose? I dont see AT&T upgrading my neighborhood any time soon. DSL barley works in my area. Funny thing is, I live near the down town area. They do offer Uverse in some parts of the city, just not in my area.