U.S. cable operators and telephone companies should collectively serve 54 million broadband subscribers by the end of the year, according to market research firm Pike & Fischer. That’s a gain of 2.45 million high-speed Internet customers during the third quarter of 2006 says their report.

At the end of the third quarter, cable operators collectively boasted a total of 28.6 million high-speed Internet customers, compared to the phone companies’ count of 22.9 million.

But the phone companies are adding new customers at a faster rate than cable operators, having garnered 58% of the net new customer addition in the third quarter, the report states.

The phone company customers are made up primarily of digital subscriber line (DSL) users, although Verizon ended the quarter with more than 500,000 homes receiving its new fiber-optic broadband service, FiOS.

Broadband is quickly becoming much more widespread in developing countries. The Indian government aims to get seven million citizens using WiMax, and bring the total number of broadband users to 20 million within three years.

There are about one million broadband users in India now.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 12:01 pm.