msos facing competition/subscribership ..
Residential Broadband Subscriber Count Tops 30 Million
As North American Providers Clear Key Milestone, U.S. Telcos Steal the Spotlight by Adding a Record-Setting 1-Million Residential DSL Customers in Q1
JUNE 01, 2004
By Michael Harris, President, Kinetic Strategies, and Publisher, Cable Datacom News
cabledatacomnews.com
Broadband service providers in the U.S. and Canada added a record 2.4 million subscribers in the first quarter, propelling the total installed residential cable modem and DSL subscriber base to 30.7 million, according to research from Cable Datacom News publisher Kinetic Strategies Inc. The bad news for cable, however, is that DSL is chewing up a larger portion of the growing broadband pie.
U.S. telcos continued their relentless march against cable in Q1, topping the 1-million mark for quarterly residential DSL subscriber additions for the first time. As a result, even though MSOs posted decent Q1 results, DSL's share of total U.S. residential broadband subscriber additions skyrocketed to 48.6%, an all-time high. By comparison, during the same period a year ago, DSL managed to capture only a 33.4% share of subscriber additions. At this pace, U.S. telcos may well surpass their cable counterparts in broadband subscriber additions in the second quarter.
The Canadian story is even more telling. In Q1, DSL providers landed 56.1% of new Canadian residential broadband subscriber additions. And at the end of Q1, DSL providers controlled 44% of the installed broadband subscriber market in Canada, up from 37.7% in the same period two years earlier when DSL providers first eclipsed cable operators in quarterly additions.
Of the total number of 30.7 million residential broadband subscribers in the U.S. and Canada at the end of the first quarter, cable counted 19.5 million customers, compared to 11.2 million for DSL. Marking yet another milestone, Kinetic Strategies estimates that the number of North American cable modem subscribers surpassed the 20-million mark in May.
Although nearly all major North American MSOs managed to improve on their weak Q4 2003 results in the first quarter, Comcast Corp. continued to slide in Q1. First quarter subscriber additions at Comcast slipped 6.8% (following a 10.5% decline in Q4) to 394,100, raising the MSO's total to nearly 5.7 million as of March 31.
Cable MSO Q1 2004 Cable Modem Subscriber Rankings
Source: Kinetic Strategies, company reports
CM Subs
Comcast 5,678,000
Time Warner Cable 3,421,000
Cox 2,149,969
Charter 1,653,000
Cablevision 1,128,930
Adelphia 1,045,000
Bright House 650,000
Mediacom 302,000
Insight 258,000
RCN 210,000
CableOne 147,343
Other 240,000
Total U.S. 16,883,242
Rogers 828,500
Shaw 985,000
Videotron 433,000
Cogeco 240,000
Other 135,000
Total Canada 2,621,500
Total North America 19,504,742
By comparison, Charter Communications had a red-hot Q1, boosting its cable modem subscriber additions 45.1% over the previous quarter to 125,200. Charter finished Q1 with 1.6 million high-speed data customers. Time Warner Cable managed a 6% gain in net adds to wrap up Q1 with 3.4 million, while Cox Communications boosted subscriber gains 11.8% to finish the quarter at 2.1 million. High-speed data subscriber additions at Cablevision Systems were down marginally to 71,910 in Q1. The decline was offset by a healthy 42,165 additions for Cablevision's new OptimumVoice VoIP service, which finished Q1 with 70,815 subscribers.
On the DSL side, Verizon and Qwest delivered dazzling results, boosting their Q1 subscriber additions by 70% and 78.3%, respectively. Verizon finished Q1 with 2.6 million DSL subscribers, compared to 744,000 for Qwest. Market leader SBC Communications posted a strong Q1 as well, boosting DSL subscriber adds by 18.3% to 446,000 to close the quarter with 3.9 million customers. BellSouth boosted its quarterly gains by 23.8% to finish Q1 with 1.6 million DSL subscribers. |
