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  2. November 2016

November 2016

Altice USA to Skip DOCSIS 3.1, Roll Out All-Fiber Network

Altice USA is placing a bet on fiber that’s so large that it will become grossly inaccurate to refer to the company as a “cable” provider in the years to come. Altice USA, the service provider comprised of Altice NV’s acquisitions of Cablevision Systems and Suddenlink Communications, has embarked on an ambitious investment initiative that will skip DOCSIS 3.1 and instead focus on a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) upgrade that will encompass the bulk of its footprint over the next five years.

The five-year deployment schedule, referred to by Altice USA as “Generation Gigaspeed,” is slated to start in 2017 and bring FTTP to its entire Optimum (former Cablevision) footprint and to most of its Suddenlink footprint. The company plans to announce its initial rollout markets in the coming months. It’s a big and bold move, as the combined footprint of Optimum and Suddenlink pass about 8.3 million fiber/cable homes. Altice USA’s plan also bucks the industry trend.

Level 3 Acquisition Will Completely Transform CenturyLink, Enterprise Market

If CenturyLink’s plan to merge with Level 3 Communications is approved, the combined carrier will get 76% of its revenue from the enterprise and wholesale market, said a Level 3 executive. After the CenturyLink, Level 3 merger, the combined company would be the most heavily business-focused of the nation’s five largest service providers by a long shot, according to data presented by Level 3 Chief Financial Officer Sunit Patel at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Leveraged Finance Conference, which was also webcast. AT&T would be in the number two spot, with 17% of its revenue coming from enterprise and wholesale, followed by Verizon and Charter who are tied at 13% and Comcast, which gets just 6% of its revenues from the enterprise and wholesale market.

The combined Level 3/ CenturyLink enterprise and wholesale markets “really becomes the prime business of the company moving forward,” said Patel. At $32.5 billion for 2015, AT&T would still have the largest overall enterprise and wholesale revenues after a CenturyLink/ Level 3 merger. But the merged company would be in the number two spot with combined CenturyLink enterprise and wholesale revenues of $18.8 billion, followed by Verizon, Charter and Comcast.

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