Among Gigabit Broadband Noise, There is Deafening Silence

[Commentary] Gigabit broadband has captured the imagination of the broadband industry. There is at least one weekly announcement of a new gigabit deployment, sometimes more. We know many service providers, large and small, are launching gigabit services. The number is in excess of 100 deployments, most of which are small towns. But what we don’t know is how many subscribers are actually buying gigabit. It seems very few gigabit service providers are willing to share active subscriber numbers.

The two highest profile gigabit service providers are Google and AT&T. To my knowledge, neither of them seems interested in revealing subscriber numbers. AT&T in their most recent quarterly earnings announcement says gigabit sales are “exceeding expectations” but will not reveal any actual numbers. Google hasn’t officially revealed subscriber numbers, even though they have now been in the gigabit business for over four years. There have been estimates by some analysts that put Google Fiber subscriber numbers at just shy of 30,000. But nothing official from Google. Other high profile carriers are silent about actual subscriber counts too. Nothing from CenturyLink, Cox, or TDS. Comcast is just getting started, but I suspect they’ll be mum on the subject as well. The PR machine behind gigabit is quite effective.