The cable industry's majority share of US broadband subscribers rose again last quarter, as Comcast and Charter gained nearly 500,000 subscribers, combined, while phone companies AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, and Frontier all lost Internet customers.

The 14 largest ISPs, accounting for 95 percent of the US market, gained 192,510 Internet customers in Q2 2016, bringing the total to 91.9 million, Leichtman Research Group reported today. Cable companies accounted for all of the gains, adding 553,293 subscribers for a new total of 57 million. The phone companies lost 360,783 subscribers, bringing them down to 34.9 million. Phone companies' losses more than doubled since Q2 2015, when they lost about 150,000 subscribers.

"Over the past year, cable companies have added about 3.5 million broadband subscribers, while telcos have had net losses of about 500,000 broadband subscribers," the group's president, Bruce Leichtman, said in the press release.

Comcast and Charter, the two biggest ISPs, led the way in subscriber gains. Comcast added 220,000 broadband subscribers to boost its total to 24 million, while Charter (the new owner of Time Warner Cable) added 277,000 subscribers for a new total of 21.8 million.

AT&T lost 123,000 subscribers, lowering its total to 15.6 million. Verizon lost 83,000, leaving it with 7 million Internet customers. CenturyLink and Frontier lost 66,000 and 77,000, respectively, leaving them with totals of 6 million and 4.6 million. (Verizon sold part of its wireline operations to Frontier at the beginning of the quarter.)

The second quarter is generally poor. But broadband subscriber growth is slowing as overall broadband additions in Q2 2016 "were less than in any quarter in the past fifteen years" since Leichtman began tracking the industry.

While phone companies are generally gaining subscribers on their modern fiber networks, they've lost customers on their slower, copper-based DSL ones. This may be by design, as the companies would rather not invest more money in a less profitable part of their business. AT&T has allowed its copper network to decay so much that it claims it doesn't have enough capacity to connect new customers in certain neighborhoods, even if those customers move into homes that previously had AT&T service. Verizon is facing criticism from customers and government officials regarding allegedly poor copper maintenance.

The cable and phone companies' pay-TV businesses lost a combined 665,000 subscribers in the second quarter, as reported yesterday.

Disclosure: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.