Forbes had an article earlier this week about the slowdown in growth in US broadband subscriptions.
It isn’t a contraction in the market, it is a reduction in net additions. Only 634,000 new subscribers signed up in the US in the second quarter of 2009. Canada also saw smaller activation numbers. Second quarter is said to be generally slow, perhaps because of student outward migration, although the economy may be making this year especially tough.
In the meantime, Rogers launch of its Ultimate 50Mbps product should heat up the back to school market.
Note: the CBC story on Rogers’ Ultimate launch said that Shaw and Eastlink top out at 25MBps and 15Mbps respectively. Since last February, Shaw actually has been offering the fastest broadband on the continent with its Nitro service, operating at 100Mbps and offering 400GB per month for data transfer.
The only use that most consumers would have for 100Mbps/400GB service would be P2P. To make a fair comparison, we should be looking at the speed of each service while using P2P. We already know that Rogers throttles all P2P traffic to the same slow speed, regardless of one's service level.
The 400GB cap is quite generous though – much more than Bell's new 60GB caps for independent DSL ISPs.