Big Quarter for US Broadband Big Quarter for US Broadband Written by Om Malik- Posted Friday, August 11 at 1:04 PM The second quarter earnings madness is over. Whether they made money, or lost some of it, for telecom and cable service providers broadband continues to sell. For the second quarter of 2006, various companies added a total of about 2.2 million subscribers, about 22% higher than the 1.8 million new additions in the second quarter of 2005. UBS Securities estimates that there are about 47 million broadband households in the US, and penetration is hovering around 42%. Of the total 2.2 million net new broadband users, DSL/Fiber (aka Phone companies) accounted for 54% while cable got rest of the pie. DSL subscribers grew 37% annually while cable modem subscribers grew 29%, UBS says. So far the number of new broadband subscribers added this year is about 5.3 million, which means about 11 million or so by end of the year. The market could actually accelerate, mostly because all those AOL users (about 17 million or so) can now take their AOL2Go to a broadband connection. Could we see faster adoption of broadband?