Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Cable companies now serve up more Internet than cable TV, study shows

Alex Tretbar
By

pay tv providers now provide internet cord cutter
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The cable TV and Internet landscape is a rapidly changing one, and it’s become increasingly clear to all parties involved that cord-cutting plays a significant role in the transformation. New data released this week by the Leichtman Research Group shows that during Q2 2014 major pay-TV providers lost about 300,000 net video subscribers, but added roughly 385,000 new high-speed Internet subscribers. This year top U.S. cable providers have passed an important milestone that has been anticipated for quite some time: they now have more broadband subscribers than traditional pay-TV subscribers.

Related: Pay-TV operators lost more subscribers than they added for the first time last year

Recommended Videos

The seventeen largest cable and telephone providers in the U.S., which represent about 93 percent of the market, now account for over 85.9 million subscribers. Top cable companies – including Comcast, Time Warner, Charter, Cablevision, and others –  have nearly 50.7 million broadband subscribers, while top telephone companies like AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink account for the other 35.2 million subscribers. The latest increase in broadband subscribers amounted to 130 percent of those added in Q2 2013 – over double what the big boys of the industry added last year. In other words: cable is shrinking, and broadband is on the rise.

Related

The trend has finally pushed the forecast of increasing broadband subscribers ahead of Pay-TV subscribers. At the end of Q2 2014, top cable providers had about 49,915,000 broadband subscribers and only 49,910,000 cable TV subscribers. While that may be a minuscule majority, it’s easy to see the writing on the wall. As time goes on, it appears more and more customers are deciding to nix traditional pay-TV models, choosing instead to find their news, media, and video entertainment online.

One other interesting piece of data from Leichtman’s research is the fact that top cable companies were responsible for a whopping 99 percent of the net broadband additions for the quarter – telecommunications companies made up the meager remaining 1 percent. It appears that, for now at least, Pay-TV giants like Comcast and its proposed bride Time Warner Cable are in the drivers seat when it comes to offering the Internet service of choice.

Editors' Recommendations

Alex Tretbar
Alex Tretbar
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Alex Tretbar, audio/video intern, is a writer, editor, musician, gamer and sci-fi nerd raised on EverQuest and Magic: The…
Plex now lets you skip the credits on movies and TV shows
A mid-credits scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off showing Plex's Skip Credits option.

In a move that is sure to enrage the thousands of people whose names appear at the end of our favorite movies and TV shows, Plex has introduced a new feature that lets you skip the end credits on the content in your personal library.

The feature works similarly to its Skip Intro option -- a far less controversial feature given that most subscription streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video already let you do this. With Skip Credits, the Plex Media Server uses an algorithm to detect the difference between a screen full of rolling text and a screen that has a full image of, well, not text.

Read more
Don’t let your cable company sell you a TV
X Class Xfinity TV

In a matter of weeks, Comcast is going to try to sell you a TV. I can understand if you might be tempted by the idea of no longer needing a cable box to get cable TV. But, I implore you: Don’t do it.

One exception: If you love your cable box -- and I mean if you really enjoy your cable box and its remote control and can’t imagine how you could ever watch TV without them -- then maybe go ahead and buy one of the TVs they’ll be hawking.

Read more
LG’s massive 325-inch DVLED TV costs more than three Ferrari SF90s
LG DVLED Extreme Home Cinema TV.

If you've got a hankering for a huge TV and you have a correspondingly huge budget, you now have a new option: LG's new line of LG DVLED Extreme Home Cinema TVs are available in sizes ranging from a mild 81-inches all the way up to a gigantic 325 inches. LG's prices are equally gargantuan: You'll pay $70,000 for the smallest model, but the biggest model is exponentially more expensive at $1,700,000 -- about three times the price of the SF90, the most powerful Ferrari road car ever produced. If those numbers don't faze you, you can order your DVLED Extreme Home Cinema model starting today.

The TVs use direct-view LED (DVLED) technology, similar to the kind used by Samsung's The Wall and Sony's Crystal LED displays, where individual microLEDs are used for each pixel, offering many of the self-illuminating advantages of OLED TVs, but with greater brightness, more colors, ultrawide viewing angles, and of course, huge screen sizes.  Unlike regular LG TVs, the DVLED Extreme Home Cinema are aimed at the high-end luxury home market, so they won't be sold in regular retail locations. Instead, these displays are available exclusively through a custom installation dealer program.

Read more