Top U.S. ISPs by Subscriber:
Analysis of 2001 Year End Reports

Dial-up access remains the reigning technological monarch of the U.S. Internet access market securing the top six slots on our expanded list of top performing ISPs.

by Patricia Fusco Managing Editor ISP-Planet [February 11, 2002]

Among the upper echelon of U.S. ISPs, little changed between the third quarter of 2001 and year-end. Top ranked America Online added about 1.4 million users and MSN picked up about one million subscribers.

During the same time period, United Online lost nearly .5 million active users, but increased its paying customer base by 200,000 billable users to total 1.46 million at year-end. This represents about 26 percent of United Online's active users as reported. EarthLink added 100,000 new users between October and the end of December. The Atlanta-based ISP continues to march toward attaining its 5 million-user milestone in 2002.

Broadband boosts
Of course, @Home users were migrated to their respective homes over the past few months. As a result, our cable tally is much more accurate with fewer account replications. The @Home subscriber shift also produced growth rate surges for cable-based ISPs. Road Runner increased its subscriber base by 15.8 percent between the third and fourth quarter of last year. AT&T Broadband reported a 13.3 percent increase, 16.4 percent at Comcast, and 15.3 percent at Charter.

When it comes to U.S. digital subscriber line (DSL) service providers, SBC still leads the pack with 1.3 million lines in use at year-end. But its "Project Pronto" remains on economic hiatus at this time, which leaves the door open for Verizon to outpace the Texas-based incumbent this year.

Bell South actually posted the best growth rate for the period increasing its DSL users by 25.4 percent having lit up another 158,000 lines. Finally, Covad rejoins our rankings having steadied its financial ship and setting course for slow, consistent growth through this year.

All told, incumbent carriers and Covad account for less than three percent of U.S. Internet users, while the top cable companies combine for about four percent of the same.

This just in
RCN, a facilities-based competitive provider of telephone, cable television and high-speed Internet services to users in metropolitan markets like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington D.C., also joins our list of top performing service providers. RCN reports that it ended the year providing dial-up access to 361,362 subscribers and broadband access to 119,955 cable modem users.

Three new entrants in our rankings include Volaris Online, who offers $16 a month unlimited Internet access in the Southeast, including services to customers throughout North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi.

Finally, Hughes satellite broadband service dubbed DIRECWAY makes our list of top U.S. performers reporting that its provides access to more than 100,000 users nationwide.

All the same, dial-up access remains the reigning technological monarch of the U.S. Internet access market securing the top six slots on our expanded list of top performing ISPs. Together, AOL, MSN, United Online, EarthLink, Prodigy and CompuServe provide Internet access to nearly 37 percent of U.S. subscribers.

Of course, 54.2 percent of American's accessing the Internet and the World Wide Web do so through thousands of independent ISPs scattered across the country, which totals some 77.5 million subscribers nationwide.

— End

< Back to Top U.S. ISP Ranking Q4 2002

Related articles:

	[Nov. 2, 2001]	Top U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q3 2001
	[Aug. 17, 2001]	Top U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q2 2001
	[May 10, 2001]	Top U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q1 2001

Other ISP-Planet Resources:

	Subscriber Value by Category
	Subscriber Ranking History