Year-end 2006 U.S. broadband numbers

We're in the middle of verifying the year-end 2006 residential broadband numbers, and I have to say that I'm impressed! Michael Cai's early 2006 report Broadband Market Updates had forecast total U.S. residential broadband subscribers of 53.8 million. It looks like the year ended about as close to that as you can get. The delta between the forecast and the actual numbers looks like it'll be within 2%, if not less.

The cable MSOs reported good gains between 2005 and 2006 (looks to be 18%), and we're following up on the DSL and FTTP and FTTN numbers now. Verizon's FiOS high-speed data customers grew 160% between Q1 and Q4 2006. Their FiOS TV growth was extremely high for 2006 - 935% between Q1 and Q4, surpassing 207,000 subscribers.

I'll share our year-end estimates for Telco TV subscribers in another post - we're getting close to cementing those figures from the earnings reports and other sources.