US Broadband Growth Slowest in Eight Years

According to a new report by broadband, media and entertainment analyst firm Leichtman Research Group (LRG), the U.S. added a net 634,000 broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2009. That's the worst quarterly performance in the eight years that LRG has been tracking this statistic. The biggest wins came at Verizon and AT&T, which added 186,000 and 112,00 subscribers respectively. Time Warner managed to add 94,000 subscribers while its larger rival Comcast eked out only 64,000. Together, the 19 companies represented in LRG's report accounted for 93 percent of the U.S. broadband market. And LRG does not predict that broadband stimulus funding will help. "The broadband stimulus will potentially bring landline services to the approximately 3 to 5 percent of US households that currently don't have a landline offering," Bruce Leichtman said. "While this will benefit this portion of households (who otherwise would not receive a landline offering), the building of the networks will take time, and the impact on the overall market will be negligible in the near term." He added that the effect of the stimulus will be "difficult to distinguish even when the networks are up and running, because this is represents a comparatively small portion of the US."