US Broadband Growth Continues to Slow

[Commentary] The number of new broadband subscribers continues to slow in the US, according to data gathered by UBS Research, driven primarily by market saturation. The Wall Street firm estimates that there are 67 million broadband subscribers in the US, or roughly 60 percent of the nation's households and about 70 percent of those with a PC. The number of net new broadband subscribers during the first half of 2009 was down 27 percent from the first half of 2008, to about 2.1 million. UBS Research expects this downward trajectory to continue. Broadband subscription providers need to counter the slowing growth by offering higher-speed (both up and downstream) subscription packages that command higher monthly fees. Instead, some backward-looking cable operators such as Time Warner Cable are looking to impose bandwidth metering to protect their revenues.