Nineteen cable and telephone providers in the United States provide about 94% of broadband access to the Internet. And according to Leichtman Research Group, Inc., they "acquired over 2.9 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2007."

This means that the top broadband providers now account for 56.2 million subscribers. The cable companies having over 30.7 million broadband subscribers, and telephone companies having over 25.4 million subscribers.

Perusing their statistics I learned that:

• The top telephone companies added 1.49 million subscribers, and the top cable providers added about 1.45 million subscribers.

• Telephone companies have added more broadband subscribers than cable providers in each of the last ten quarters, acquiring about 1.86 million more subscribers than cable over that time

• The top cable broadband providers have a 55% share of the market, with a 5.3 million subscriber advantage over the telephone companies

So, who is number one you may ask? AT&T with 12,855,000 subscribers closely followed by Comcast with 12,050,000. What I found interesting was that AT&T added more new subscribers than Comcast. I recently switched finding Comcast's service superior to AT&T. Well, that is one man's opinion anyway.

There is a battle in the next tier, too. Verizon has 7,398,000 subs and Time Warner at 7,000,000. Their, too, the telco is adding slightly more new accounts in the quarter.

With U.S. broadband now topping 56,210,044, this will make the Internet television overbuilders like Joost, BitTorrent, and Babelgum a real threat. But that battle is likely down the road a few years (maybe 2009?) and we should see Google and Microsoft join in, too.