Top 24 U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q1 2008

As Covad goes private and drops off the list, the monopolies consolidate their hold on the market. The rankings are mostly static, although EarthLink dropped one spot down.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [July 22, 2008]

A warning about consolidation
The top five ISPs in our list (counting Time Warner twice) have a combined market share of 55.7 percent and the top ten ISPs in our list (again counting Time Warner twice) have a combined market share of 71.4 percent.

A few corporations are consolidating their control over the internet.

Data
We use Jupiter Research estimates in several areas (note, Jupiter Research is now part of JupiterKagan). Jupiter Research estimated the total number of subscribers in the United States to be 91.7 million subscribers at the end of Q2, 20007, and we do not have more recent data. Note, however, that more recent data is available to Jupiter Research subscribers.

This number does not include: subscribers at universities and in government.

It includes residential consumer accounts and some business accounts (the distinction is eroding as residential broadband speeds rise and telework grows).

Notes
SBC reported 4.108 million ISDN business lines in its annual report but did not report ISDN business lines in its most recent quarterly report. Those 4 million lines by themselves account for 4 percent of the U.S. market and account for more subscribers than any ISP outside the top five.

Verizon now has 1.8 million FiOS customers.

Qwest now has 699,000 video customers.

Insight Communications saw its subscriber numbers drop sharply as it dissolved a partnership with Comcast.

Data for CenturyTel does not include dialup subscribers, which were included in the numbers in the annual reports. They comprised about 11 percent of the total, which is a good number. Dialup is not a growth business, but it remains profitable even as the subscriber base declines.

Dave Burstein wrote (in Statistics and Lies, see Related articles, below):

It was a really bad quarter for DSL in the U.S., with cable jumping ahead despite much higher prices. DSL had been leading cable for several quarters, mostly as the offers pulled some of the last dialup customers. AT&T raised prices, Verizon killed advertising, and none of the larger carriers extended into the 20M or so households they don't serve.

Off the list
RCN is reporting "Revenue Generating Units" as opposed to subscriber numbers, and has therefore been removed from the list for failing to report subscriber numbers.

Covad was acqired [.pdf] by private equity. It no longer reports numbers and has been removed from the list.

Methodology
Subscriber counts are as of March 31, 2008.

Note that, due to rounding, the market share percentages in this chart will not always add up to exactly 100.0 percent even though they do for this quarter.

We do not have numbers for several key ISPs. Therefore, the "Other ISPs" listing overstates the role of the independent ISP in the U.S. market.

We show sources for all data.

Also see page 2: How We Count >