Altice USA Planning Sizable Speed Upgrades
Altice USA plans to offer multi-gig speed in 65% of its footprint by the end of 2028, up from about 30% now, the company said Thursday. In a call with analysts announcing Q4 2024 results, CEO Dennis Mathew said the company would rely on increasing its fiber footprint and reallocating spectrum to its hybrid fiber-coaxial network for the improvement. He said the company plans to expand its network by an additional 175,000 passings this year, most of which will be via fiber.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
CFO Marc Sirota said demand for higher speeds remains, with more than half of new customers choosing 1 Gbps download speeds or more. The "mid-split" spectrum reallocation on its fiber-coax network should allow download speeds of up to 2 Gbps, he said.
Altice USA had revenue of $2.24 billion in Q4 2024, compared with $2.3 billion the same quarter a year earlier. It ended Q4 with 4 million residential broadband primary service units, down from 4.2 million in Q4 2023; 1.9 million residential video PSUs, down from 2.2 million; and 1.3 million residential telephone PSUs, down from 1.5 million. It had 460,000 mobile lines at the end of Q4 2024, up from 322,000.
Altice USA said Q4 highlights included 40,000 mobile line adds, the biggest quarter in five years, but it lost 39,000 broadband subscribers. Mathew said Hurricane Helene in North Carolina affected broadband numbers.
He said 2024 ended with Altice USA's network passing 9.8 million locations, including 3 million with fiber. Noting that the company sees particular broadband weakness among the poor, Mathew said it's starting a targeted program offering flexible payment options. He said Altice USA also will start billing on behalf of third-party video-streaming partners this year. The company's 2025 priorities also include increasing mobile penetration, he said.
MoffettNathanson said in an investor note that Altice USA focusing on network upgrades that will lead to greater speeds is a strategy its cable peers "figured out years ago" and a step it has been expected to take for close to five years. In addition, it said the company is especially well positioned to offload mobile traffic from its mobile virtual network operator agreement with T-Mobile onto its Wi-Fi network, particularly in its densely populated eastern footprint. "That bodes well for the eventual profitability of the service, even if today they are almost certainly still burdened by high customer acquisition costs given the early stage of their ramp."