A bit before the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday, I came across a pair of interesting articles (linked below) over at DSL Reports that had some interesting figures for the state of broadband and cable TV. While cable companies continue to rule the roost when it comes to the ISP subscriber side of things, they are also steadily bleeding cable TV subscribers. According to the numbers (which they got from Leichtman Research), the third quarter of 2015 has been simultaneously the worst quarter ever for telcos who lost both internet and cable TV subscribers, it was the best quarter (of least cable TV losses) since 2006.
On the broadband side of things, of the top seventeen providers Leichtman Research provided numbers for, cable companies brought in 787,629 new subscribers while the telephone companies lost 143,338 of their subscribers (likely customers on older forlorn CO-fed DSL tech). Cable companies are maintaining a healthy lead in total subscribers as well at approximately 54 million versus 25 million telco subscribers.
| Subscribers YTD | Net Subscribers +/- in Q3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cable | 54,262,565 | 787,629 |
| DSL | 35,246,382 | -143,338 |
Not too bad considering all the bad press the cable companies have thrust upon themselves with, for example, Comcast rolling out 300GB caps across the US and their notorious (or should I say infamous) customer support departments. Somehow only CableOne and WOW lost subscribers in Q3.
At the end of Q3'15 there were 94 million cable television subscribers shared among the 12 top providers (eight cable, two satellite, and two cable). Collectively, the companies lost 190,693 TV subscribers versus last quarter which is an increased loss YoY as well (155,000 in Q3'14). It should be noted that if Dish's Sling TV subscriber numbers are not taken into account, it is a 345,000 decrease in pay TV subscribers.
| Subscribers | Net Subscribers +/- in Q3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cable | 48,809,907 | -144,693 |
| Satellite | 33,479,000 | -3,000 |
| Telephone | 11,678,000 | -49,000 |
The cable companies lost 144,693 subscribers in Q3 making it an improvement in that it is the least amount of subscribers lost since 2006. For example, in the same quarter last year the cable companies lost 440,000. Comparatively, the telephone companies only lost 49,000 TV subscribers, but it was their worst quarter yet when it comes to losing TV subscribers. Charter, Direct TV, and Verizon were the only three of the listed companies to actually pick up subscibers this quarter while everyone else lost them.
What do you think about the numbers? Will the cable beheomouths continue being the dominant source of internet for the US? Will traditional cable/paid TV ever make a comeback, and if not just how many subscribers will these providers have to lose before they embrace new models that support à la carte and even cord cutting/streaming only?
Even with whole 300gb comcast
Even with whole 300gb comcast cap, a lot of DSL providers have caps still and have had them for a while, example is AT&T. With speeds cable offers vs most DSL little easier to see why they would have them.
Yeah AT&T DSL is a joke.
Yeah AT&T DSL is a joke. They make TWC (which I have now) look like saints. Slow, unreliable DSL AND it has easy to hit data caps, AND they charge you overages. I recommend an indie DSL provider like Sonic.net or DSL Extreme if you live in an AT&T area.
Not that Comcast is great either. I fought tooth and nail to make sure they didn’t merge with TWC. TWC has been reasonably good to me, there’s no need to take the risk that it’d go full Comcast on me.
Am I the only person who has
Am I the only person who has never had issue with Comcast? Always great service and reliable, around 15 years with zero issues. Some friends have had issues with them but it has always turned out to be their old equipment or lack of virus protection at the root of it all.
I haven’t had much problem
I haven’t had much problem either. My only issue was the poor heads up they gave me when they changed their signal and we lost the network for a few hours. But I bit the bullet and got a DOCSIS 3 modem at the time and have been able to scale up afterwards without a hitch. Since then, they have been really good about informing us about LOS events- like some moron digging up the cable- but generally it was up and running again in less than 12 hours.
After AOL and Compuserve hell, Cox was an easy choice that I had no regrets of going to … except the increasing cost :p .
Me too. I started with them
Me too. I started with them when they were Time Warner, then ATT, now Comcast (or was it ATT->TW?). It’s always been the fastest, most reliable, most consistent service available for the price in my area. I dabbled with Qwest (now CenturyLink) and a handful of other alternatives in the last 20 years, but found the speeds to be very inconsistent. CenturyLink is about 3 months away from offering gigabit in my neighborhood, but they still have a 250GB cap. Retarded.
Comcast Business Class has no cap, way better support, priority routing, and has guaranteed minimums instead of “up to”. It’s about 30% more expensive compared to residential plans, but it’s been amazingly consistent. I’ve lost power to my house twice in 5 years, but never lost my Internet connection.
Comcast/Cox has been good
Comcast/Cox has been good about the internet, but with the internet being what it is, TV is the one I thought would have had bigger declines. Cox has come to suk and I think Direct TV provides more HD and services for the $$$.
Regardless, network TV STILL has not caught up with 1080p HD and here we are buying 4k screens. 4k service is a sick joke and stands to remain that way long after we have recorders and disks (which are just starting to show on the market). It will be … interesting … to track the TV subscriber market as I think it stands to lag even further behind household technology.
Would you believee AT&T tried
Would you believee AT&T tried to offer me fiber connection with a data-cap? I laughed at the at&t rep.
i live in a typical
i live in a typical pennsylvania town where you only have two subscribers- Cable is the preferred one because of the days of the local cable subsciber televising the council meetings.
the phone company is second and started with modem, then dsl and in some areas can give you fiber- and now the world of the favored contract comes in.
I live in new housing- all lines are underground- – so the last contract with Comcast locked in that Verizon could have access to the poles of course but not to the underground lines.
so when i used up DSL – i had no choice- i had to go comcast, there are other restrictions a well- only cable into apartments etc… anything to shut down competition
Comcast should be only
Comcast should be only allowed to charge 2% per month of the total value of the cable modem, and not the outrageous $10 a month rental fee. The total cost of the monthly rental fee should include the price of the cable modem plus a small maintenance charge included on top of the cable modem’s actual unit cost plus 10% for maintenance costs over the life of the cable modem. So cost plus 10% for the equipment with monthly rentals fees of only 2% of the cable modem’s actual price. That $10 a month cable modem rental charge is excessive. Comcast buys millions of these units while probably getting a big discount and their monthly rental fees are excessive! So for hardware that costs $100 + $10 dollars for lifetime cable modem maintenance times .02(2%) comes to $2.2 per month. It would take about 60 months to equal the costs of a cable modem, or 5 years.
You might wanna google
You might wanna google “comcast use your own modem.”
🙂 Yeppers 🙂 .
🙂 Yeppers 🙂 .
No that’s not a solution to
No that’s not a solution to being overcharged by Comcast for cable-modem rentals. Comcast is over charging for Cable Modem Rental, way above the costs of the hardware and reasonable maintenance for the hardware! In some States Comcast is a De Facto public utility, so where is the state utility rate regulation!
You can buy your own modem
You can buy your own modem and not rent one from Comcast. Paying their ridiculous rental price is voluntary. If you don’t like the price, don’t pay it.
http://www.howtogeek.com/186941/buy-your-cable-modem-instead-of-renting-it-to-save-4-8-per-month/
Tim i like this subject.
Tim i like this subject. I’ve recently moved into a new house and had to switch from a previous cable provider to a new one. I first signed up for DirecTV which turned into a huge nightmare, involving me having to get their “president’s office” involved to completely refund every dollar i’d spent with them. I switched over to Time Warner Cable, which i just found out has been billing me $227/month for something that was supposed to be $113/month.
When will we be able to plug a chromecast in and pay for only the channels we want?!
Wow, I am sorry to hear about
Wow, I am sorry to hear about all those billing errors, that really sucks! Have you been paying by credit card? I'd try to reach out to their social media support or equivalent of presidents office (keep it concise and firm but frame it as you are a loyal customer and want to get these errors taken care of, don't threaten them with legal action or a chargeback… yet) and if that doesn't get you anywhere talk to your credit card company on getting those extra charges sorted out (unfortunately you'll likely only be able to chargeback the latest two months/60 day lookback).
I think one day we will get there, but it is still a long, long ways out :/.
Video subs will continue to
Video subs will continue to crater because of the crap value proposition, which is why they’re leaning on data caps – what better way to nudge people with few valid data service options (thanks, easily cowed/bought local governments!) onto your overpriced video service than charging you criminally high bandwidth overage rates for using the over-the-top services you actually like?