Altice USA, which owns and operates the Optimum communications networks serving customers in Westchester and Fairfield among other places in and outside of the New York Metro area, says it is accelerating its on-going installation of fiber-optic lines in a modern network to replace existing coaxial cables. Altice says it plans to equip more than two-thirds of its entire footprint with broadband fiber in the next four years.
The ability for customers to have their cable TV, internet and telephone service needs met through the use of fiber-optic service was a major selling point used by Verizon when it was rolling out its FiOS service to communities in Westchester in 2007 in competition with what was then known as Cablevision. At that time, Cablevision owned the cable systems that today carry the Optimum brand and Verizon heavily promoted the fact that its FiOS service used fiber-optic lines directly to the customers”™ premises while Cablevision still was relying on coaxial cable technology.
Monica Azare, Verizon’s senior vice president for New York and Connecticut, said at the time, “FiOS TV will bring something to consumers they’ve never had before, with incredible pictures and sound clarity and innovative new services. Our all-fiber-optic upgrade is a complete transformation of Verizon’s communications network.”
Dexter Goei, Altice USA CEO currently says, “Fiber is the future and given the progress we have made at Optimum with our fiber expansion, we”™re excited to build on that success and break ground later this year at Suddenlink (another Altice brand) to bring our advanced network to more customers and communities.”
An Altice source told the Business Journal that its fiber services currently are available to more than 160,000 households and businesses across the Hudson Valley including Westchester as well as in Fairfield County.
“We continue to expand our fiber footprint and reach new homes and businesses in these areas as our fiber deployment continues. We are also expanding our retail presence in the area. We recently opened a new retail location in Westport, will soon open a new store in Stamford, and plan to open a store in Mount Kisco later this year,” the source said.
Altice says it plans to have its fiber networks passing more than 6.5 million addresses by the end of 2025 in New York, Connecticut, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
Altice”™s new fiber network is being built to deliver 1 gigabit symmetrical broadband service, with the capability to handle up to 10 gigabit speeds in the future. Symmetrical service means that the network operates at the same speeds when uploading files from a customer’s device to the internet as when downloading them.
Altice says that it currently serves residential and business customers across 21 states through its Optimum and Suddenlink brands along with operating programming services News 12, Cheddar and i24NEWS.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Altice USA reported total revenues of $10.09 billion for the year ending Dec. 31, 2021, compared with $9.98 billion for the previous year. Net income was $1.01 billion in 2021 compared with $433.4 million in 2020.
