In a blog last week I talked about how cable TV subscriptions in the US had dropped for the industry as a whole for the year ending in the first quarter of 2015. But Leichtman Research Group has published the statistics for US broadband for the end of 2014 and this shows a very different story.

It’s obvious that the improving economy has helped broadband sales and the largest cable companies and telcos added 3 million new broadband customers in 2014, up 114% over additions in 2013.

Following are the statistics for 2014 followed by a few observations:

Top Cable Companies                 Total               Added             %

Comcast                                     21,962,000        1,277,000          6.2%

Time Warner                              12,253,000           657,000          5.7%

Charter                                         5,072,000           432,000          9.3%

Cablevision                                   2,760,000           (20,000)        -0.7%

Suddenlink                                   1,149,100             78,800          7.4%

Mediacom                                    1,013,000             48,000          5.0%

WOW                                                727,800             19,600         2.8%

Cable ONE                                       488,454             15,823         3.3%

Other Cable Companies              6,525,000           150,000         2.4%

Total Top Cable                          51,960,354        2,658.223         5.4%

Top Telcos       

AT&T                                           16,028,000               1,000          0.0%

Verizon                                         9,205,000           190,000          2.1%

CenturyLink                                 6,082,000             91,000          1.5%

Frontier                                        2,342,500           108,500          4.9%

Windstream                                 1,131,600           (39,300)        -3.4%

FairPoint                                         321,624             (8,142)         -2.5%

Cincinnati Bell                                269,900               1,500          0.6%

Total Top Telcos                        35,380,624           344,558         1.0%

Total All                                      87,340,978        3,002,781         3.6%

A few notes on the numbers. ‘Other Cable Companies’ includes Cox and Bright House Networks. These numbers do not include smaller cable companies, smaller telcos, CLECs, fiber over-builders or municipalities. Just as a point of reference, it’s estimated that there were 123.2 million households in the US at the end of 2014, so these large companies sold broadband to 68.4% of them. Total US broadband penetration is currently estimated at around 73%, meaning the rest of the market is served by companies not on this list.

Some observations:

• It’s obvious that large cable companies keep winning the battle for broadband and they captured 89% of the net additions for the year.
• The cable company net additions are 123% more than this group saw in 2013.
• Growth is slowing at the telcos  and the 2014 numbers are 72% of the growth seen by the group in 2013.
• By adding almost 1.3 million broadband customers, Comcast now has more broadband customers than cable customers.
• AT&T continues to add U-verse customers but has been losing older technology DSL customers.