Unlike Canada, Holland and England, telcos falling behind. Overall growth continues at about 2%/year. Some of those without broadband are signing on. There's a surprisingly modest loss to "wireless only" broadband despite speeds of 5-15 megabits and going up. AT&T lost 136,000 broadband customers while Time Warner Cable added 189,000. Both AT&T and Verizon showed large gains where they've upgraded (U-Verse, FiOS) and large losses where they haven't.
Saul Hansell in NY Times got this one right: AT&T & Verizon and Verizon put much of their network into "harvest mode," back in 2004-5 with the intent of milking those lines and/or selling them.
About a third of their network has 10-15 year old ADSL at speeds of 3-15 megabits. Meanwhile, they've doubled the prices of the cheapest offerings ($15-20 has become $35-50) and increased the higher speed prices. Standard cable in the U.S. is now 50 meg down.
From Leichtman Research, which has proven reliable over the years.
| Broadband Internet | Subscribers at End of 2Q 2015 |
Net Adds in 2Q 2015 |
| Cable Companies | ||
| Comcast | 22,548,000 | 179,000 |
| Time Warner Cable | 12,770,000 | 189,000 |
| Charter | 5,294,000 | 86,000 |
| Cablevision | 2,781,000 | 14,000 |
| Suddenlink | 1,180,800 | (2,800) |
| Mediacom | 1,051,000 | 10,000 |
| WOW (WideOpenWest) | 713,100 | (8,900) |
| Cable ONE | 497,036 | 457 |
| Other Major Private Cable Companies* | 6,640,000 | 45,000 |
| Total Top Cable | 53,474,936 | 511,757 |
| Telephone Companies | ||
| AT&T | 15,961,000 | (136,000) |
| Verizon | 9,221,000 | (25,000) |
| CenturyLink | 6,108,000 | (9,000) |
| Frontier^ | 2,388,500 | 29,000 |
| Windstream | 1,120,800 | (11,600) |
| FairPoint | 317,100 | (1,278) |
| Cincinnati Bell | 275,100 | 2,400 |
| Total Top Telephone Companies | 35,391,500 | (151,478) |
| Total Broadband | 88,866,436 | 360,279 |