In the span of a year, Connecticut home and business owners added 443,000 high-speed Internet connections ”“ more than enough to cover a third of all homes statewide, and maintaining the state”™s status as one of the best-blanketed broadband markets in the nation.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines a broadband connection as one delivering at least 200 kilobits per second. The FCC issues semiannual reports gauging broadband adoption nationally.
Connecticut had 1.25 million high-speed Internet connections in service as of December 2006, the FCC reported, up from slightly more than 800,000 the previous year. Residences use two of every three broadband connections in the state.
That equates to a broadband line for every 4.2 Connecticut residents, trailing only Massachusetts and New Jersey for high-speed access to the Internet. Calculating business broadband adoption by residential population, Connecticut had among the five best rates in the nation, with New Jersey again tops.
Whereas New Jersey had 70 percent more broadband lines in use at the close of last year, Connecticut and New York managed just a 55 percent gain, placing them in the bottom third nationally. The United States as a whole had a 61 percent increase in high-speed data lines to 82.5 million.
Of the 1.25 million access lines in Connecticut, roughly a third of them subscribe to cable television carriers such as the Optimum Online unit of Cablevision, which holds cable franchises for much of Fairfield County.
Cable-modem growth in Connecticut was just 13 percent in 2006, compared with a 21 percent growth rate nationally.
In 2005, the FCC stopped reporting the number of digital subscriber line (DSL) connections sold in Connecticut by AT&T Inc. and six other carriers. However, subtracting the cable-modem carriers ”“ and assuming mobile wireless carriers and other alternative technologies hold a 25 percent market share evidenced in other states ”“ Connecticut had more DSL subscribers than cable-modem subscribers at the close of last year.
That would put the state in the slim minority of states (10) in which Baby Bell-style carriers have a dominant market share over their cable competitors. In the Northeast, Massachusetts is roughly split between DSL and cable modem ”“ in New York, Cablevision and its peers hold a nearly 3-1 advantage over DSL.
Rhode Island and three other states did not disclose either cable or DSL figures.
Even if one allows for more mobile wireless subscribers in wealthy Connecticut, DSL still made significant gains from 2004, when cable companies had 50 percent more subscribers than DSL companies.
AT&T declined to make public its broadband subscriber numbers in Connecticut, but spokesman Seth Bloom said the company has observed a national trend of increasing DSL adoption at the expense of cable modem.
The new FCC figures were issued just as a state judge in Hartford ruled that AT&T can resume offering its uVerse television service in Connecticut, overturning an earlier state Department of Public Utility Control decision that would have required AT&T to seek a cable TV franchise.
State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who had fought to hold AT&T to the same rules that govern cable TV companies, indicated he would not appeal the decision.
The decision came even as the FCC issued a directive intended to prohibit franchising authorities from making unreasonable demands on cable TV providers.
In another ruling affecting television competition in Connecticut and elsewhere, the FCC nullified earlier rules that allowed apartment and condominium owners to use exclusivity agreements to restrict cable company access to their buildings.
Â
Â
