Slowing Economy Slowing Broadband Growth
The demand for broadband skidded sharply during the fourth quarter of 2008. We went through the latest quarterly financials of all the major broadband service providers and collated the net new subscriber additions –- and so far, things aren’t looking good. Of the 12 majors, five companies, including Cablevision, aren’t due to report their quarterly results until later this month or early March.
Nevertheless, the sharp decline in net new additions is pretty clear (see the chart below). The downturn has been particularly hard on cable companies, especially Time Warner Cable, which saw a 44 percent decline in new additions.
Verizon has posted the best performance so far, while AT&T is seeing some benefit from the rollout of its Internet TV service, U-verse, which commands higher bandwidth. AT&T lost about 1,600 DSL subscribers in the most recent 3-month period.
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