Broadband growth has fallen by half in a year. Cable and telephone providers of high-speed Internet signed up 887,000 net new customers last quarter — half of the number of signups in the same period last year. Because of market saturation, companies are focusing more on selling faster, more expensive services. Nationwide, cable companies have 35.3 million broadband customers while phone companies have 29.7 million. AT&T is still the nation's largest Internet service provider with 14.7 million customers, followed by Comcast with 14.4 million customers. It's good news for AOL and EarthLink, which are profiting from a core of dial-up subscribers reluctant to embrace DSL or cable Internet. [AP]