Top 23 U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q3 2008

The ISP industry had been in half a year of recession as of September 30, 2008. The big companies are essentially seeing zero growth.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [December 2, 2008]

The end of growth
The top five ISPs in our list (counting Time Warner twice) have a combined market share of 48.2 percent. If the sleepy FCC were to allow just one or two more mega-mergers, the clock would have wound back to the Bell era, and the U.S. would stop innovating as the rest of the world grows.

The ISPs on our list combined for a net gain of about 150,000 subscribers, and growth averaged 0.56 percent, which is basically stagnation, though for most ISPs, Q3 of 2008 was better than Q2.

Clearwire, which burned through another $150 million this quarter, made headlines when it managed to add only 8,000 subscribers, but no ISP on the list had growth higher than 3.5 percent, and many lost subscribers, including two incumbents. Verizon made back the subscribers it lost last quarter.

In the rankings, it was a good quarter for Hughes Network Systems, which (just barely, by a few hundred subscribers) jumped up two spots past stagnant competitors Insight and Clearwire.

It was a particularly bad quarter for dialup. Road Runner is now much larger than AOL, and EarthLink and United Online lost customers. United Online's earnings were saved by a recently added flower business.

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, 2007, 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.

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

Off the list
Cox is no longer reporting subscriber numbers.

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 September 30, 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 >