Slowly and surely, the U.S. is inching towards the 100 million broadband subscriber milestone. Latest figures compiled by Leichtman Research Group, a Durham, NH-based market-research firm, show that about 83.5 million folks buy broadband access from major cable and telecom companies. The data doesn’t include the number of users who subscribe to satellite broadband, wireless broadband or are like me — customers of independent service providers. In the United States, according to Ookla, a broadband speed-measurement service, average bandwidth to the home is a shade over 20 Mbps, versus Hong Kong, which has an average of about 70 Mbps.

During the three months ending September 30, 2013, data shows that these big companies added a little over 520,000 new broadband connections, a majority of them going to Comcast (s CMCSA) and other cable companies that are selling faster connections compared to their phone company counterparts. Many cable company…