The 16 largest US digital service providers had at the end of March almost 62.5 million broadband subscribers, after adding 2.2 million in 2008’s first quarter. Cablecos still have the most at 34.2 million to the Telcos 28.2 million, giving the cablecos a 54.8% market share.
The cablecos increased their lead slightly in the quarter, adding 1.182 million, 55% of the total net adds, compared to the telco net adds of 1 million.
Rider Research, our US partner and publisher of The Online Reporter, has put together detailed numbers which are for sale as its Broadband Scorecard. Most of the data is available in the operators financial results.
AT&T leads the US broadband hit parade with 14.65 million but by less than 600,000 over Comcast’s 14.05 million. Both are comfortably ahead of third place Verizon, which has 8.5 million and fourth place Time Warner Cable with its 7.9 million.
Comcast barely nosed out AT&T for most net new adds – 492,000 to 491,000. Cox added 304,000 to edge out Verizon and its 266,000 adds.
AT&T (148,000) and Verizon (263,000) added over 410,000 net new U-verse and FiOS pay-TV subscribers, a number that does not include any DirecTV and Dish subscribers added. In the same quarter, the major cablecos had a net loss of 107,000 pay TV subscribers.
DirecTV (275,000) and Dish (35,000) added 310,000 including what the AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Embarq sold for them.
The major cablecos added 1.25 million new phone subscribers while the telcos lost 1.72 million. That takes a lot of money out of the telcos’ bank accounts and transfers it to the cablecos’.
These numbers also show that the top telcos know how to sell pay TV. AT&T (U-verse) and Verizon (FiOS) have between them over 1.5 million subscribers. Counting the satellite TV subscribers they have, AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Embarq have 5.7 million pay TV subscribers.
If you add in almost 31 million pay TV subscribers that DirecTV and DISH have and multiply that by, say, $40 a month ($120 a quarter or almost $500 a year) and the total of the cablecos’ missing pay-TV revenue is a serious number.
Whatever revenues and profits AT&T and Verizon have lost in their residential phone business has been more than made up in revenues and profits from their mobile phone operations. Between them, AT&T and Verizon have over 138 million mobile phone subscribers. The cablecos have zero.
The eight largest US cellcos have almost 238 million subscribers. They added 4.025 million more in the first quarter.