The US now has over 83 million broadband subscribers

Slowly and surely, the US is inching towards the 100 million broadband subscriber milestone. Latest figures compiled by Leichtman Research Group show that about 83.5 million folks buy broadband access from major cable and telecom companies. The data doesn’t include the number of users who subscribe to satellite broadband, wireless broadband or are customers of independent service providers. During the three months ending September 30, 2013, data shows that these big companies added a little over 520,000 new broadband connections, a majority of them going to Comcast and other cable companies that are selling faster connections compared to their phone company counterparts. Many cable company executives in recent days have said that folks are opting for their broadband-only services instead of paying for traditional television services.

• The top cable companies accounted for 84% of the net broadband additions for the quarter and added about 440,000 subscribers.
• AT&T and Verizon added 828,000 fiber subscribers (via U-verse and FiOS) in 3Q 2013, while having a net loss of 798,000 DSL subscribers.

(Nov 29)