08/25/2017

From Comcast to Cincinnati Bell: Tracking the top 15 residential broadband service providers

Who has the most wireline broadband subscribers? Cable and telecom carriers continue to expand their broadband footprints using a mix of copper, HFC and fiber technologies to satisfy consumers' desire for higher speed offerings.

We are tracking the top 15 broadband providers. This list includes the top telco and cable operators, which are ranked by the total number of broadband subscribers they had as of the end of the second quarter.

In this report we track three main metrics:

Total broadband subscribers: Here we looked at the total number of subscribers these 15 providers had as of the end of the quarter. In the broadband race, it’s clear that cable has the upper hand, controlling 63.6% of the U.S. residential broadband market. This segment was led by Comcast and Charter with 25.3 million and 22 million subscribers, respectively. According to the Leichtman Research Group, cable had a total of over 59 million subscribers, while telcos ended the quarter with a total of only 34.2 million subscribers. 

Broadband additions, losses: Cable clearly had the upper hand during the second quarter, with seven U.S. cable companies signing up 461,997 residential high-speed internet users in the second quarter. Charter Communications reported the biggest growth at 267,000 users, followed by Comcast with 175,000. Cable’s aggressive DOCSIS 3.1 rollouts, which enable operators to deliver 1 Gbps over existing HFC infrastructure, are paying off.