Cable companies continue to add broadband customers faster than their telephone company counterparts, but the lead is narrowing, according to a new report from Infonetics Research.

DSL subscribership grew by 41% in North America between 2003 and 2004, according to report author Michael Howard, principal analyst at Infonetics.

“North American DSL service providers are provisioning DSL subscribers nearly as fast as their rival MSOs,” he said in a prepared statement. “Pretty soon, the number of DSL subscribers will come close to matching cable broadband subscribers: we expect 30 million DSL subscribers and 32 million cable broadband subscribers in North America by 2008.”

There was also a steep climb in Very High Speed DSL or VDSL deployment. VDSL ports represented 12% of IP DSLAM ports in 2003 and are projected to reach 52% in 2008, the report said.

Worldwide, revenue from sales of Cable Modem Termination Systems--the network gear that drives cable modems--hit a new peak, according to Infonetics Research’s Cable Aggregation Hardware quarterly worldwide market share and forecast report.

In the fourth quarter alone, CMTS revenue grew 14% to $193 million, exceeding expectations, said Howard. Cisco Systems, Motorola and Arris continue to be the top three vendors in that segment, with Cisco claiming a 50% market share in revenue and ports shipped, the report stated.

Worldwide, DSL subscribers grew 68% to 97 million between 2003 and 2004, and Infonetics is projecting DSL to reach more than 190 million subscribers in 2008. Alcatel continues to have a sizeable lead in selling DSL aggregation hardware, with Huawai a distant second, and Lucent Technologies third in ports shipped and UTStarcom third in revenue share.