The top 14 residential broadband providers added 455,000 customers in the second quarter, more than double the 230,000 added in the same period of 2017, according to Leichtman Research Group
Big gainers included Comcast, which added 260,000 high-speed internet users in Q2 compared to just 175,000 last year. Overall, the top seven cable operators added 585,726 users in the second quarter up from 461,997 in the three-month period ending June 30, 2017.
Related: Pay TV Subscriber Losses Dropped to About 415,000 in Q2 as vMVPDs Continue to Grow
The top seven telco operators nearly halved their losses, with their ranks reducing by 130,453 compared to 233,260 in the comparable year-ago Q2. Frontier Communications, which lost 101,000 HSI users in the second quarter last year, lost only 32,000 in the most recent quarter.
“The broadband industry added nearly twice as many subscribers in 2Q 2018 as in last year’s second quarter,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, Inc. “This quarter marked the first year-to-year quarterly broadband increase since 2Q 2016.”
Overall, it was the first time top ISPs grew subscribers year over since the second quarter of last year.
Collectively, the top 14 ISPs control 95% of the U.S. residential HSI market. And the top seven cable companies now control 64.7% of that market.
The positive subscriber numbers will undoubtedly help the cable industry on Wall Street, with investors having become skittish regarding the prospects of HSI market saturation.
