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Analysts said the TW Cable video customer trends were also a bit weaker than Wall Street had expected on average. TW Cables and AT&Ts subscriber updates are among the first during fourth-quarter earnings season for TV distributors, which analysts expect will show a return of pay TV providers to video user growth after two straight quarters of subscriber declines.

TW Cable said it lost 141,000 video subscribers in the final quarter of 2010, fewer than the record 155,000 it had lost in the third quarter. TW Cable COO Rob Marcus said the weak housing market and economy continue to have the biggest impact on subscriber momentum. 

Time Warner Cable TWC posted nice acceleration in revenue growth during the fourth quarter, though margins took a hit on higher programming costs and a number of one-time items. Customer growth came in about as we had expected based on managements comments last quarter, though Internet access growth was on the weak side. This mix shift, coupled with price increases, pushed average revenue per Internet access customer up more than 3% during the quarter, an impressive figure relative to recent experience. Total revenue grew 5.9% year over year, the fastest pace of any quarter during 2010, on a sharp increase in political advertising.

In addition to another 141,000 cable TV subscribers cutting the TWC cord in Q4, the net loss was the third straight quarter in a row of sub losses.The No. 2 cable MSO in the U.S. did see growth outside its bread-and-butter business though: it added 94,000 Internet customers and 72,000 phone customers.

By. AT & T Technology

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