Comcast tops in adding broadband subs

Strategy Analytics has added further evidence that the cable industry is no longer a TV entertainment industry but a bona fide broadband services provider. The analyst firm has released a report that says Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) more than doubled its nearest competitor, AT&T (NYSE: T), by adding one million net broadband customers over the course of the last year.

The report noted that broadband continues to be hot; there were four million new subs overall in 2010, 1.2 million of whom signed up in the fourth quarter. Those numbers though, do reflect a "gradual plateauing" of the residential broadband market because they are mirrors of 2009 figures, SA said.

The report also threw up some red flags about usage-based billing (aka data caps).

"The issue is less about the actual caps--which frankly, are not terribly onerous--and more about consumer perception," Ben Piper, director of the SA Multiplay Market Dynamics service said in a news release. "Few subscribers really know what 150 GB a month looks like, but if they perceive that the rules have changed, they will react."

For more:
- see this news release

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