U.S. broadband growth slowest in eight years | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

The U.S. government broadband stimulus program couldn’t have come along at a better time. Leichtman Research Group said Monday that the country’s 19 largest cable and telephone providers added a net 634,000 broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2009 (see table below; click to enlarge). That’s 29 percent fewer than were added in the same period a year ago and the lowest number of net additions of any quarter in the last eight years.

The reasons for the decline? Seasonality, the econalypse and the maturation of the market. “The second quarter has proven to be traditionally weak for broadband growth, but with the market becoming more mature, broadband adds further waned,” Bruce Leichtman, LRG’s president and principal analyst, said in a statement...