Leichtman Research Group says that there are 40.2 million broadband connections in the US, and nearly 94% of those connections are being sold by the twenty largest cable and DSL providers. The total net adds for the 3Q 2005 were 2.6 million, with over half of that total going to DSL. Cable Companies have 23.2 million while DSL providers have 17.0 million subscribers. The momentum, apparently is shifting to DSL.
In the past year, DSL providers added 520,000 more subscribers than cable, but the top cable broadband providers maintain a 6.2 million subscriber advantage over DSL and have a 58% share of the US residential broadband market . Net DSL adds in the quarter were 379,000 more than 3Q 2004, while cable net adds skidded 80,000 from the same quarter last year.
Bruce Leichtman, president notes, “Aggressive offers from DSL providers continue to expand the market, even as cable operators are able to add subscribers in similar numbers to a year ago, while maintaining average broadband revenue per subscriber of over $40 per month.” It would be great to study the revenues of these two groups. And a comparison of the speed would clearly put things in perspective.
Om, I have been tuning into your podcasts. I think the content is good and succint. However, the sound quality is poor. I think you are not using an external mic, but your mac’s builtin mic. I dont want to preach to you what you know and have written about; if user experience is not good..then its a lost cause.
A reader and listner…
i know i know. my new kit is still not here. ordered some new mics and mixer board etc. hopefully it should be here soon enough. i am pretty sure, the quality is going to improve…
When I moved to South Bay, Comcast had trouble finding a qualified contractor that would (a) know how to connect two cables, (b) speak English. SBC, on the other hand, got the DSL connected in matter of few days. It was an easy choice there, even though the advertised speed of SBC DSL is lower than Comcast’s, but hey, it’s $15 a month, almost pocket change.
Om,
These statistics are always interesting but tell only half the tale.
“And a comparison of the speed would clearly put things in perspective.”
COX Cable serves as my home ISP. When working, its speeds are more than adequate for my purposes. However, the last 3 weeks the throughput speeds have become worse than dialup. For example, it took me 32 minutes to navigate the three pages of depth required to find their customer service telephone number!
The COX technician arrived yesterday, and much to my surprise, found nothing amiss. He showed me the COX-supplied Internet page that indicates my download and upload speeds; they were excellent and as advertised. In turn, I showed him how painfully slow internet pages were to load, including many pages at Google (always a good fault check of congestion). He shrugged his shoulders and pointed again to the results of his “test”. I likened that test to the airline industry’s ontime performance rating: the flight could depart 90 minutes late and still arrive on time. (The dirty secret is that airlines contract with airports based on arrivals, not departures. So they damned well better land on time.)
As I said, the numbers might indicate more broadband home subscribers, but I suspect the connection speeds they receive are anything but broadband. Numbers lie. (Thanks, Mark Twain!)
The phone companies never were set up for data transmission, preferring voice and its profits, so I find it surprising that DSL has become more reliable than cable, which was created originally for data transmission, and quickly gaining in demand and usage.
When will we ever have fiber to the home…? Then we might finally have true broadband connections!