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High-speed Net service in U.S. up one-third

The number of U.S. subscribers to broadband high-speed Internet service jumped 32.3 percent to 42.9 million lines in the year ended June 2005, the FCC reported.
/ Source: Reuters

The number of U.S. subscribers to broadband high-speed Internet service jumped 32.3 percent to 42.9 million lines in the year ended June 2005, the Federal Communications Commission reported Monday.

The number of broadband lines jumped 10.4 million lines over the 12-month period, 5 million of which were added during the second half of that period, the FCC said in a new report.

The United States ranks 12th in the world for broadband subscribers, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. U.S. officials say other countries have subsidized service and people live in concentrated areas that are easier to serve.

"Given the geographic and demographic diversity of our nation, the U.S. is doing exceptionally well," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times newspaper Monday.

U.S. cable and telephone companies are engaged in a fierce battle to offer customers a suite of communications services.

The majority of broadband connections, 61 percent, were via cable modem service offered by companies like Comcast Corp. while more than 37 percent were digital subscriber lines (DSL) offered by telephone companies like AT&T Inc., the report found.

DSL is less expensive than cable Internet service but offers slower download speeds. The vast majority of cable customers receive between 2.5 megabits per second (Mbps) and 10 MBPS in at least one direction while most DSL customers get between 200 kilobits per second and 2.5 Mbps, the FCC said.

The FCC last August eased regulations on DSL service for residential customers and last month took steps to lift some rules on business customers for Verizon Communications.

Other companies, like AT&T, plan to apply for similar relief for their business services.

"To give more Americans access to broadband, we need to encourage this kind of infrastructure investment, not discourage it with burdensome regulations," Martin said.