Leichtman Research Group recently released the broadband customer statistics for the third quarter of 2019 for the largest cable and telephone companies. Leichtman compiles most of these numbers from the statistics provided to stockholders other than Cox, which is estimated.
The numbers provided to investors are lower than broadband customers these same companies report to the FCC, and I think that most of the difference is due to the way many of these companies count broadband to apartment buildings. If they provide a gigabit pipe to serve an apartment building, they might that as 1 customer, whereas for FCC reporting they likely count the number of apartment units served.
Following are the broadband customer counts for the third quarter and a comparison to the second quarter of this year.
| 3Q 2019 | Added | % Change | |
| Comcast | 28,186,000 | 379,000 | 1.4% |
| Charter | 26,325,000 | 380,000 | 1.5% |
| AT&T | 15,575,000 | (123,000) | -0.8% |
| Verizon | 6,961,000 | (7,000) | -0.1% |
| Cox | 5,145,000 | 25,000 | 0.5% |
| CenturyLink | 4,714,000 | (36,000) | -0.8% |
| Altice | 4,180,300 | 14,900 | 0.4% |
| Frontier | 3,555,000 | (71,000) | -2.0% |
| Mediacom | 1,316,000 | 13,000 | 1.0% |
| Windstream | 1,040,000 | 5,700 | 0.6% |
| Consolidated | 784,151 | 1,143 | 0.1% |
| WOW | 773,900 | 10,420 | 1.3% |
| Cable ONE | 689,138 | 7,376 | 1.1% |
| Atlantic Broadband | 446,137 | 2,441 | 0.6% |
| TDS | 437,700 | 4,300 | 1.0% |
| Cincinnati Bell | 425,100 | (400) | -0.1% |
| 100,553,426 | 605,660 | 0.6% |
Leichtman says this group of companies represents 96% of all US broadband customers. I’m not sure how they calculated that percentage. That implies that there are only about 4 million broadband customers for companies not on this list, and that feels a little low to me.
For the quarter, these companies collectively saw growth that annualizes to 2.4%. This is a significant uptick over the second quarter of 2019 that saw an annualized growth rate of 1.7%.
On an annualized basis the third quarter of 2019 added about the same number of customers that were added for the calendar year of 2018. However, the cable companies are performing better this year while the losses continue to accelerate for the big telcos. The big telco losers for the quarter are Frontier, which lost 2% of its customer base, and AT&T and CenturyLink which each lost 0.8% of their customer base. Following are the annualized changes in customers in 2018 and 2019:
‘ 2018 2019
Cable Companies 2,987,721 3,317,904
Telcos ( 472,124) ( 895,564)
Total 2,425,597 2,422,640
Both Comcast and Charter had spectacular quarters and continue to account for most of the growth in broadband, as each company added around 380,000 customers for the quarter. It would be interesting to understand what is driving that growth. Some of that comes from providing broadband to new homes. Some comes from customers converting away from DSL. And some comes from expansion – I know of examples where both companies are building new network around the fringes of their service areas.
“I know of examples where both companies are building new network around the fringes of their service areas”
Are you talking about fringes of their franchise areas or outside of those areas?
Also, when if ever, are we going to eliminate franchise fees and open up real competition?
What’s the definition of “broadband” in this report?
These are the numbers that ISPs report to their shareholders. I assume it’s anything they label and bill as broadband and could range from a really slow DSL connection from Frontier to a 10 Gbps connection offered by a handful of ISPs.