Verizon now Massachusetts’s 2d-largest cable-TV provider

Verizon Communications became the second-largest cable-television provider in Massachusetts last year, with more than 280,000 customers statewide, though its growth slowed as it expanded into fewer new communities, according to figures compiled by the state. Comcast Corp. remained the state’s largest provider, with nearly 1.6 million customers, nearly six times Verizon’s tally. But Verizon, which markets the service as FiOS TV, has slowly chipped away at the market share for Comcast and other traditional cable providers. Verizon, long the state’s dominant telephone company, added more than 54,000 TV customers last year, an increase of 24 percent, to overtake Charter Communications Inc. as the number two cable provider in the state, according to numbers provided by the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable.