The broadband industry added 2,095,203 broadband net adds last year, according to the Leichtman Research Group (LRG). The increase was driven by the top cable companies, which added a net of 2,720,827 broadband subscribers. That offset net losses of 625,624 from the top telephone companies.
Last year’s total were lower than 2016 net additions, with 2017 representing about 78% of the additions of 2016, when 2.7 million were added. “The top broadband providers in the US added nearly 4.8 million net broadband subscribers over the past two years,” Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group said in a press release. “The top cable companies accounted for 130% of the net broadband additions in 2017, following 122% of the net adds in 2016.”
Other findings include:
- The top cable companies added 2.7 million broadband subscribers in 2017 – 83% of the net additions for the top cable companies in 2016
- Comcast has added over a million broadband subscribers each year from 2010-2017
- Charter has added over a million broadband subscribers each year from 2014-2017
- The top telephone companies lost about 625,000 subscribers in 2017 — similar to a loss of about 600,000 subscribers in 2016
The top cable companies ended 2017 with 61,162,135 subscribers. Among the largest are Comcast (25,869,000 total, 1,168,000 2017 adds), Charter (23,903,000 total, 1,310,000 adds), Altice (4,046,200 total, 83,700 adds), Mediacom (1,209,000 total, 47,000 adds) and WOW (730,000 total, 11,100 adds).
The telcos ended the year with 33,894,300 subscribers. AT&T was the only large telco to add subscribers during the fourth quarter, according to LRG. It finished the year at 15,719,000 after adding 114,000 subscribers. The next four are Verizon (6,959,000 total with a loss of 79,000), CenturyLink (5,662,000 total, 283,000 loss), Frontier (3,938,000 total, 333,000 loss) and Windstream (1,006,600 total, 44,5000 loss).
These mixed results were better for the sector being analyzed than another bit of research released by Leichtman this week. The firm said that top pay-TV providers in the United States lost 1,495,000 net video subscribers in 2017. That was almost double the 760,000 video subscribers lost the year before.
Image courtesy of flickr user Sean MacEntee.
