There was a sea change among the big ISPs in 2022. The big news is that most of the growth in the industry came from the T-Mobile and Verizon cellular FWA broadband product. Cable company growth crawled to a halt after a robust 2021, and the sector only grew by 55,000 net broadband customers in the fourth quarter. The big telcos still had small losses for the year, but the big news is that they added 2.4 million customers to fiber during the year.
The following list of ISPs represents about 95% of the U.S. broadband market. The large ISPs, in aggregate, added just over 3.5 million net customers in 2022. The two cellular FWA companies added 3,171,000 of those additions. Cable companies added 517,103 customers for the year, with most of the growth coming at the beginning of the year. The big telcos had a net loss of 181,276 customers but continued to furiously replace DSL with fiber.
The following statistics were compiled by the Leichtman Research Group, which tracks the broadband performance of the largest ISPs in the country. Following are the customers counts for the fourth quarter and the end of year 2022:
| % 4Q | Annual | |||
| 4Q 2022 | 4Q Change | Change | Change | |
| Comcast | 32,151,000 | (26,000) | -0.1% | 250,000 |
| Charter | 30,433,000 | 105,000 | 0.3% | 344,000 |
| AT&T | 15,386,000 | (66,000) | -0.4% | (118,000) |
| Verizon | 7,484,000 | 37,000 | 0.5% | 119,000 |
| Cox | 5,560,000 | 0 | 0.0% | 30,000 |
| Altice | 4,282,900 | (7,700) | -0.2% | (103,300) |
| Lumen | 3,037,000 | (63,250) | -2.0% | (253,000) |
| Frontier | 2,839,000 | 8,000 | 0.3% | 40,000 |
| T-Mobile FWA | 2,646,000 | 524,000 | 24.7% | 2,000,000 |
| Mediacom | 1,468,000 | 0 | 0.0% | 5,000 |
| Verizon FWA | 1,452,000 | 389,000 | 36.6% | 1,171,000 |
| Windstream | 1,175,000 | 0 | 0.0% | 10,300 |
| Cable ONE | 1,060,400 | (1,600) | -0.2% | 14,400 |
| Breezeline | 693,781 | (14,173) | -2.0% | (22,997) |
| TDS | 510,000 | 3,500 | 0.7% | 19,700 |
| Consolidated | 367,458 | (14,454) | -3.8% | 724 |
| Total | 110,545,539 | 873,323 | 0.8% | 3,506,827 |
| Cable | 75,649,081 | 55,527 | 0.1% | 517,103 |
| Telco | 30,798,458 | (95,204) | -0.3% | (181,276) |
| FWA | 4,098,000 | 913,000 | 28.7% | 3,171,000 |
There are a lot of interesting trends withing these numbers:
- T-Mobile is now the 9th largest ISP, and the Verizon FWA product comes in at eleventh. T-Mobile is poised to pass Frontier and Lumen soon at the current growth rate.
- While all of the landline ISPs on the list are feeling pressure from the cellular FWA product, the bigger and more permanent challenge for the cable companies is the 2.4 million telco customers added to fiber to the year. That statistic shows why cable companies are scrambling to improve upload speeds.
- The biggest loser on the list continues to be Lumen, which lost 7.7% of its broadband customers for the year. It’s worth noting that the above numbers represent the smaller Lumen after the spinoff of Brightspeed in 2022. Breezeline (Formerly Atlantic Broadband) was the biggest percentage loser among cable companies, having lost 3.3% of broadband customers during the year.
- TDS continues to be the fastest-growing landline ISP at 4.0% growth for the year. Next is Verizon FiOS, having grown by 1.6% for the year.
