ISP & Cable Numbers for the United States - February 2009

Here are the updated numbers for the US ISP market and trying to get accurate figures for Internet access for DSL, Cable Access and Dial-up. I worked with OECD published data for Broadband adoption and I have gone through all the reports and disclosures for each of the ISPs shown below. I believe these figures represent a reasonably accurate representation of the genuine adoption of broadband either via DSL or Cable. Broadband connections included in this data cover download speeds equal to or faster than 256kbit/s.

Table 1 US ISP & Cable Operators
Name	ADSL	Cable	Dial	Total
AOL	2,400,000		5,100,000	7,500,000
United Online	1,500,000			1,500,000
Road Runner		8,600,000		8,600,000
Earthlink	575,000		1,725,000	2,300,000
Embarq	1,400,000			1,400,000
Cox		3,650,000		3,650,000
Comcast		14,700,000		14,700,000
Charter	2,900,000			2,900,000
Cablevision		2,400,000		2,400,000
Suddenlink Comm		1,400,000		1,400,000
Bright House Networks		2,200,000		2,200,000
AT&T World net/BellSouth/SBC	10,200,000	4,000,000	600,000	14,800,000
Insight Communications		420,000		420,000
Verizon	8,500,000			8,500,000
Qwest	2,800,000			2,800,000
Media com		730,000		730,000
Cincinnati Bell	230,000			230,000
Local Net		260,000		260,000
Wind stream		400,000		400,000
Others		1,200,000	30,000,000	30,000,000
Totals	30,505,000	32,230,000	37,425,000	100,000,000
	Broadband Total	62,725,000

The reported numbers for AOL look a little suspect, but I feel the overall picture for DSL and Cable Access for each of the ISP or Cable Companies detailed in the Table is reasonable at this point in time.
The figure of 62,725,000 Broadband access either via DSL or Cable indicates approximately 0.7% growth over the figures published in October 2007 , which indicates that growth has largely stalled and the only way to grow will be through acquisition. 2009 will be a very tough year for ISPs and Cable companies as numbers users stagnate and it becomes increasingly challenging to hang on to users in a very competitive market. I am sure we will see the sort of offers last seen with the intense Fixed line Phone competition of the the mid 90s when it seemed to be possible to switch from deal to deal without paying anything for service relying on the free intro offers. We shall see! Without doubt some of the companies listed will not be in next years listing in any case. Several are heavily relient upon on-line ad spend and average PPC levels are falling across the board as companies re-evaluate their media spend in recessionery times. 2009/2010 is likely to be a as bad a period for ISPs since 2002.

Some notable changes in numbers with respect to Insight Communications which saw its subscriber numbers drop sharply as it dissolved a partnership with Comcast. One other major change has been the SBC/ATT numbers, which have changed massively mainly in dial-up.

Once again I have used public sources such as those published by ISP Planet and OECD published data as well as correlation with website information from individual ISP/Cable Companies.

One area that I have not been able to evaluate is the mobile dongle market in the US which is taking huge market share in the UK and across Europe. The growth in this area could account for the apparent sluggish growth in the main market. I will report back on this shortly.