Showing signs of a slowdown amid an increasingly saturated market, the top 17 U.S. cable and telco providers added 2.6 million net additional broadband subs in 2013, about 95% of the total tallied in 2012, Leichtman Research Group found in its latest report.
Those providers, representing about 93% of the market, accounted for 84.3 million subs, with cable representing a commanding 49.3 million, versus 35 million among the top telcos.
The top MSOs studied netted 82% of the broadband adds in 2013, compared to 88% of the take in 2012, LRG said. They added nearly 2.2 million broadband subs last year, 11% off from the total net additions in 2012.
LRG said the major telcos in the report added 480,000 broadband subs, a 146% of the total net additions raked in among that group in 2012. AT&T and Verizon Communications added 3.3 million subs coming way of U-verse and FiOS, and shed 3.05 million subs between them. U-verse and FiOS Internet subs now account for 47% of telco broadband customers, up from 29% at the end of 2011, LRG added.
“At the end of 2013, the top broadband providers in the US cumulatively had over 84.3 million subscribers, adding 2.6 million subscribers in the past year,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement. “With top Telco providers focused on upgrading customers from DSL to fiber broadband services, cable providers accounted for over 80% of the net broadband adds in 2013.”
Last week, LRG reported that the top 13 U.S. multichannel video programming distributors lost 105,000 subscribers in 2013.
