The second quarter is traditionally the slowest for broadband growth each year anyway, but the housing market and a saturated broadband customer base is responsible for Q2 having the slowest broadband growth for the Unites States in eight years. According to new research by the Leichtman Group, the nineteen largest cable and telephone providers in the country, who collectively control 93% of the market, added just 634,000 in the second quarter.

According to Leichtman, cable operators now lay claim to about 38 million broadband subscribers,while telephone companies have about 31.9 million subscribers. AT&T (15,548,000 broadband customers) continues to barely beat Comcast (15,322,000) for the title of country's largest broadband provider.

While cable operators still control 54% of the market, telcos saw stronger growth than cable last quarter. "In a reverse of last year’s second quarter, when cable operators got three-quarters of the net broadband adds, Telcos earned over 60% of the broadband net adds in 2Q 2009," says Bruce Leichtman.

One strong reason for that? The investment in next-generation infrastructure (which some investors frowned upon) drove people toward products like Verizon FiOS. Both Verizon and AT&T saw the biggest jump in quarterly subscribers, adding 186,000 and 112,00 subscribers respectively. Comcast only added 64,000 new broadband customers, something they blamed on the need to advertise for the digital transition.