Altice USA, Inc. (‘Altice USA’), a holding company, provides broadband communications and video services in the United States and market its services under the Optimum brand.
The company delivers broadband, video, telephony, and mobile services to approximately 4.6 million residential and business customers across its footprint. The company’s footprint extends across 21 states (primarily in the New York metropolitan area and various markets in the south-central United States) through a fiber-ri...
Altice USA, Inc. (‘Altice USA’), a holding company, provides broadband communications and video services in the United States and market its services under the Optimum brand.
The company delivers broadband, video, telephony, and mobile services to approximately 4.6 million residential and business customers across its footprint. The company’s footprint extends across 21 states (primarily in the New York metropolitan area and various markets in the south-central United States) through a fiber-rich hybrid-fiber coaxial (‘HFC’) broadband network and a fiber-to-the-home (‘FTTH’) network, with approximately 9.8 million total passings as of December 31, 2024. Additionally, the company offers news programming and advertising services.
The company’s ongoing FTTH network build has enabled it to deliver multi-gig broadband speeds to meet the growing data needs of residential and business customers. Concurrent to the company’s FTTH network deployment, it also continues to upgrade its existing HFC network through the deployment of digital and expansion of Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (‘DOCSIS’) 3.1 technology in order to roll out enhanced broadband services to customers. The company makes available 1 Gbps broadband services in most of its HFC footprint and up to 8 Gbps symmetrical speeds in its FTTH footprint, which provide a connectivity experience supporting the most data-intensive activities, including streaming 4K ultra-high-definition (‘UHD’) and high-definition (‘HD’) video on multiple devices, online multiplayer video game streaming platforms, video chatting, streaming music, high-quality virtual and augmented reality experiences, and downloading large files.
Products and Services
The company provides broadband, video, telephony, and mobile services to both residential and business customers. It also provides enterprise-grade fiber connectivity, bandwidth, and managed services to enterprise and hyperscaler customers, and offers advertising time and services to advertisers. In 2024, the company had approximately 3.0 million homes and businesses passed with its state-of-the-art FTTH network. In addition, it offers various news programming through traditional linear and digital platforms to consumers across its footprint.
Residential Services
Broadband Services
The company provides a variety of broadband service tiers tailored to meet the needs of its customers. Current offers include symmetrical speeds up to 8 Gbps for the company’s residential customers.
The company’s FTTH broadband service is available to approximately 3.0 million homes, offering multi-gig symmetrical speed tiers to substantially all its FTTH customers, and it plans to continue this expansion. In addition, it is deploying Smart WiFi 6 and 6E routers to its customers to provide whole home WiFi coverage.
Substantially all of the company’s HFC network is digital and DOCSIS 3.1 compatible, which allows it to provide HFC customers with advanced broadband, video, and telephony services.
Video Services
The company offers a variety of video services through Optimum TV, which include delivery of broadcast stations and cable networks, over-the-top (‘OTT’) services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and others, advanced digital video services, such as video-on-demand (‘VOD’), HD channels, digital video recorder (‘DVR’), and pay-per-view, to its residential markets. Depending on the market and level of service, customers have access to local broadcast networks and independent television stations, news, information, sports and entertainment channels, regional sports networks, international channels, and premium services, such as Max, Showtime, and Starz. Additionally, the company provides app-based solutions for TV, including a companion mobile app that allows viewing of television content on iOS or Android devices, as well as the available Optimum TV app on Apple TV, and on Optimum Stream for eligible customers.
The company’s residential customers pay a monthly charge based on the video programming level of service, tier, or package they receive and the type of equipment they select. Customers who subscribe to seasonal sports packages, international channels, and premium services may be charged an additional monthly amount. The company may also charge additional fees for pay-per-view programming and events, DVR, and certain VOD services.
The company also provides advanced services, such as pay-per-view and VOD, that give residential video customers control over when they watch their favorite programming. The company’s pay-per-view service allows customers to pay to view single showings of programming on an unedited, commercial-free basis, including feature films, live sporting events, concerts, and other special events. The company’s VOD service provides on-demand access to movies, special events, free prime time content, and general interest titles. Subscription-based VOD premium content, such as Max and Starz, is made available to customers who subscribe to one of its premium programming packages.
For a monthly fee, the company offers DVR services. Depending on the service area and market, customers may receive either a set-top box DVR with the ability to record, pause, and rewind live television, or an enhanced Cloud DVR with remote-storage capability to record 15 shows simultaneously while watching any live or pre-recorded show, and pause and rewind live television with three storage capacity options to select from.
Additionally, customers can use their credentials to access apps provided by programmers and networks on platforms where these apps are offered, including access to premium direct-to-consumer products, such as Max, with eligible subscriptions.
In 2024, the company launched three new video offerings, Entertainment TV, Extra TV, and Everything TV. Together, these video offerings help make up Optimum’s modern video model, bringing to life the new vision of Optimum TV, which helps break conventional all-or-nothing options to better provide content geared toward customers’ unique and modern viewing preferences.
Telephony Services
Through Voice over Internet Protocol (‘VoIP’) telephone service, the company also offers unlimited local, regional, and long-distance calling within the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands for a flat monthly rate, including popular calling features, such as caller ID with name and number, call waiting, three-way calling, and enhanced emergency 911 dialing. The company also offers additional options designed to meet its customers' needs, including directory assistance, voicemail services, and international calling.
Mobile
The company offers a mobile service providing data, talk, and text to consumers in or near its service footprint. The service is delivered over a nationwide network with long-term evolution (‘LTE’) and 5G (where available) coverage through its network partners, including its infrastructure-based mobile virtual network operator (‘MVNO’) agreement with T-Mobile U.S., Inc. (‘T-Mobile’). The company offloads mobile traffic using its Optimum Wi-Fi network of hotspots in the New York metropolitan area, as well as select customer premises equipment across its footprint. The company’s full infrastructure MVNO agreement with T-Mobile is differentiated from other light MVNOs in that it gives it full access control over its own core network, as well as the Home Location Register and subscriber identification module (SIM)/eSIM cards. This allows the company to fully control seamless data offloading and the handover between the fixed and wireless networks. It also has full product, features, and marketing flexibility with its mobile service. In addition, during 2024, the company began offering its customers additional services, such as mobile device protection and connection-backup service (wireless backup on fixed Internet service), and began offering customers the ability to purchase additional mobile equipment, such as Apple iPads, in addition to phones.
The company’s mobile product is sold at Optimum stores, as well as online. Consumers can bring their own devices or purchase or finance a variety of phones (new or certified pre-owned) directly from the company, including Apple, Samsung, and Motorola devices.
Business Services
The company offers a wide and growing variety of products and services to both large enterprise and small and medium-sized business (‘SMB’) customers, including broadband, telephony, networking, and video services. As of December 31, 2024, the company served approximately 376.6 thousand SMB customers across its footprint. It serves enterprise customers primarily through Cablevision Lightpath LLC (‘Lightpath’), its 50.01% owned subsidiary.
Enterprise Customers
Lightpath, the company’s fiber enterprise business, provides ethernet, data transport, IP-based virtual private networks, Internet access, telephony services, including session-initiated protocol (‘SIP’) trunking and VoIP services to the business market primarily in the New York, Boston, and Miami metropolitan areas. In 2024, Lightpath completed the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of United Fiber and Data (‘UFD’), acquiring UFD's fiber network between New York City and Ashburn, Virginia, as well as a metro network in New York City and New Jersey. Lightpath also provides managed services to businesses, including hosted telephony services (cloud-based SIP-based private branch exchange), managed WiFi, managed desktop and server backup, and managed collaboration services, including audio and web conferencing. Through Lightpath, the company also offers fiber-to-the-tower (‘FTTT’) services to wireless carriers for cell tower backhaul that enables wireline communications service providers to connect to towers that their own wireline networks do not reach. Lightpath's enterprise customers include companies in health care, financial, education, legal, and professional services, and other industries, as well as the public sector and communication providers, incumbent local exchange carriers (‘ILEC’), competitive local exchange carriers (‘CLEC’), and hyperscaler customers. As of December 31, 2024, Lightpath had approximately 16,800 locations connected to its fiber network, which currently includes approximately 11,300 unique route miles (in each case, consisting of route miles that are owned by Lightpath or currently utilized by Lightpath pursuant to indefeasible right of use agreements with Altice USA and other parties). ‘Unique route miles’ reflect the total aggregate distance measured in miles of all routes contained within the network that do not include overlap for multiple sheaths on similar routes.
In the company’s footprint outside of the New York metropolitan area, for enterprise and larger commercial customers, it offers high-capacity data services, including wide area networking and dedicated data access, and advanced services, such as wireless mesh networks. It also offers enterprise-class telephone services, which include traditional multi-line phone service over DOCSIS and trunking solutions via SIP for the company’s Primary Rate Interface (‘PRI’) and SIP trunking applications. Similar to Lightpath, the company also offers FTTT services in these areas. These services are offered on a standalone basis or in bundles that are developed specifically for its commercial customers.
SMB Customers
The company provides broadband (with symmetrical speeds up to 8 Gbps), video, mobile, and telephony services to SMB customers. In addition to these services, it also offers managed services, including hosted private branch exchange, managed WiFi, premiere technical support, and network solutions, security, and network access, and equipment for SMB customers. Telephony services include Optimum Voice for Business, Business Hosted Voice, and Business Trunking (SIP and PRI). Optional telephony add-on services include international calling and toll-free numbers. Optimum Business Mobile and Optimum Business Connection Backup (e.g., wireless failover) solutions are also available to its business customers, including SMBs. These services provide wireless connectivity for voice/data handsets, data-only devices, and data failover solutions.
News and Advertising
News 12
The company’s News 12 networks consist of seven 24-hour local news channels in the New York metropolitan area—the Bronx, Brooklyn, Connecticut, Hudson Valley, Long Island, New Jersey, and Westchester—providing each with complete access to hyper-local breaking news, traffic, weather, sports, community news, and more. News 12 also includes a streaming OTT regional news channel, News 12 New York, that showcases top stories and events from across the tri-state area.
News 12 has been widely recognized by the news industry with numerous prestigious honors and awards, including multiple Emmy Awards, Edward R. Murrow Awards, NY Press Club Awards, and more.
i24NEWS
Launched in July 2013, i24NEWS is an international news channel specializing in delivering international news focusing on the Middle East. i24NEWS' global news team covers top stories as they happen in four languages: English, French, Arabic, and Hebrew. In December 2024, the company entered into an agreement to transfer its ownership of the i24NEWS business to Next Alt or an affiliate thereof. This transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025 following the satisfaction of closing conditions, including receipt of necessary regulatory approvals.
Optimum Media
Optimum Media is an advanced advertising and data company that provides audience-based, multiscreen advertising solutions to local, regional, and national businesses and advertising clients. Optimum Media enables advertisers to reach millions of households on television through cable networks, on-demand, and addressable inventory across the United States, and through their proprietary technology and privacy-compliant database of aggregated consumer and TV viewership data.
Juice Media
Juice Media is a data-driven omnichannel media and advertising platform that combines proprietary technology, strategy, and activation to drive outcome-oriented solutions for advertisers. Its omnichannel approach empowers customers and partners to get the maximum return on their advertising campaigns.
New York Interconnect
In many markets, the company has entered into agreements commonly referred to as ‘Interconnects’ with other cable operators to jointly sell local advertising. This simplifies the company’s clients' purchase of local advertising and expands their geographic reach. In some markets, the company represents the advertising sales efforts of other cable operators; in other markets, alternative cable operators represent it. NY Interconnect, LLC is a joint venture between Altice USA, Charter Communications, Inc. (‘Charter’), and Comcast Corporation (‘Comcast’).
Franchises
As of December 31, 2024, the company’s systems operated in more than 1,400 communities pursuant to franchises, permits, and similar authorizations issued by state and local governmental authorities. Franchise agreements typically require the payment of franchise fees and contain regulatory provisions addressing, among other things, service quality, cable service to schools and other public institutions, insurance, and indemnity. Franchise authorities generally charge a franchise fee of not more than 5% of certain of the company’s cable service revenues that are derived from the operation of the system within such locality. The company generally passes the franchise fee on to its customers.
Programming
The company designs its channel line-ups for each system according to demographics, programming contract requirements, market research, viewership, local programming preferences, channel capacity, competition, price sensitivity, and local regulation. The company obtains programming, including basic, expanded basic, digital, HD, 4K UHD, VOD, and broadband content, from a number of suppliers, including broadcast and cable networks.
The company generally carries cable networks pursuant to written programming contracts, which continue for a fixed period of time, usually from two to five years, and are subject to negotiated renewal. Cable network programming is usually made available to it for a license fee, which is generally paid based on the number of customers who subscribe to the level of service that provides such programming. Such license fees may include ‘volume’ discounts available for higher numbers of customers, as well as discounts for channel placement or service penetration. For home shopping channels, the company receives a percentage of the revenue attributable to its customers' purchases, as well as, in some instances, incentives for channel placement.
The company typically seeks flexible distribution terms that would permit services to be made available in a variety of retail offerings and on a variety of platforms and devices in order to maximize consumer choice. Suppliers typically insist that their most popular and attractive services be distributed to a minimum number or percentage of customers, which limits the company’s ability to provide consumers with full purchasing flexibility.
The company’s cable programming costs for broadcast stations and cable networks have increased in excess of customary inflationary and cost-of-living type increases. The company expects programming costs to continue to increase due to a variety of factors, including annual increases imposed by stations and programmers, and additional programming being provided to customers, including HD, 4K UHD, digital, and VOD programming. In particular, broadcast and sports programming costs continue to increase significantly. In addition, contracts to purchase sports programming sometimes provide for optional additional programming to be available on a surcharge basis during the term of the contract.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing are managed through multiple channels that allow the company to reach current and potential customers in a variety of ways, including through inbound call centers, outbound telemarketing, retail stores, e-commerce, and door-to-door sales. The company also uses mass media, including television, digital, radio, print, and outdoor advertising, to attract potential customers and invite them to visit its website or call a service representative. The company’s sales and service teams use a variety of tools and technology to match customers' needs with its best-in-class connectivity products, with a focus on building and enhancing customer relationships.
The company invests heavily in target marketing, due to its regional strategy and local focus. The company’s strategic priority is on building new customer relationships and expanding their use of its broadband, video, voice, and mobile offerings, delivering innovative solutions matched to their needs. Most of the company’s marketing is developed centrally, then customized regionally, tailoring to local audiences. The company has a diverse customer base, and a key focus of it is to effectively serve a broad range of segments, and to reflect its community’s diversity within marketing materials and advertisements. The company also gives back to its communities through initiatives and sponsorships focused on digital equity, future innovators (educational programs related to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and robotics), and SMBs.
Among other factors, the company monitors customer perceptions, sales and marketing impact, and competition, to increase its responsiveness to customer needs and measure the effectiveness of its efforts. The company’s footprint also has several large college markets where it markets specialized products and services for students who live in multiple dwelling units (‘MDUs’), such as dormitories and apartments. Beyond serving consumers, the company has a separate dedicated sales, marketing, and service team for its SMB, mid-market, and enterprise customers.
Customer Experience
The company’s call center strategy is to demonstrate that it is a reliable support expert, that is simple to interact with, and works to the best of its ability to resolve the issue in the first attempt. Accordingly, the company makes a concerted effort to continually improve each customer interaction and has made significant investments in its people, processes, and technology to enhance its customers' experience and to reduce the need for customers to contact it.
The insights from operational customer service metrics and the company’s customer surveys help the company focus its product, technology, process, and network improvement efforts. The company proactively collects feedback from its customers on all frontline interactions, product experience, and service experience. Listening to and acting upon customer and agent feedback is a major pillar in the company’s customer experience program, and as such, it reviews feedback as part of its ongoing operations.
From a call center operations standpoint, the company provides technical and account support service to its customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it has systems that allow its customer care centers to be accessed and managed remotely in the event that systems functionality is temporarily lost, which provides the company’s customers access to customer service with limited disruption. To ensure the highest quality support, the company has call routing to specialized agents based on certain call types. The company continues to work on simplifying and improving its agent toolset to better serve its customers' needs.
The company also offers its customers the ability to interact with it and get support through digital channels, whether via its website, chat, interactive voice support, text messaging, mobile app, or social media (X and Meta). Customers can use the company’s customer portal website and mobile app to manage and pay their bill online, obtain service and account information, and get self-help troubleshooting support. The company’s goal is to continue to improve upon those customer care experiences, whether through traditional or digital methods (such as through the My Optimum app and chat).
Network Management
The company’s cable systems are generally designed with an HFC architecture that has proven to be highly flexible in meeting the increasing needs of its customers. The company delivers its signals via laser-fed fiber optic cable from control centers known as headends and hubs to individual nodes. Each node is connected to the individual homes served by the company. A primary benefit of this design is that it pushes fiber optics closer to the company’s customers' homes, which allows the company to subdivide its systems into smaller service groups and make capital investments only in service groups experiencing higher than average service growth.
The company has upgraded its networks, both through the deployment of its FTTH network and through new DOCSIS technologies, and it is delivering download speeds of up to 1 Gbps in most of its HFC footprint and up to 8 Gbps in its FTTH footprint. The company also has a networking caching architecture that places highly viewed Internet traffic from the largest Internet-based content providers at the edge of the network closest to the customer to reduce bandwidth requirements across the company’s national backbone, thus reducing operating expenses. This collective network architecture also provides the company with the capability to manage traffic across several Internet access points, thus helping to ensure Internet access redundancy and quality of service for the company’s customers. Additionally, the company’s national backbone connects most of its systems, which allows for an efficient and economical deployment of services from its centralized platforms that include telephone, VOD, network DVR, common video content, broadband Internet, hosted business solutions, provisioning, e-mail, and other related services.
The company’s ongoing FTTH network build passes approximately 3.0 million homes and businesses as of December 31, 2024, and has enabled it to deliver multi-gig broadband speeds to meet the growing data needs of residential and business customers.
The company has also focused on system reliability and disaster recovery as part of its national backbone and primary system strategy. For example, to help ensure a high level of reliability of the company’s services, it implemented redundant power capability, as well as fiber route and carrier diversity in its networks. With respect to disaster recovery, the company invested in its telephone platform architecture for geo-redundancy to minimize downtime in the event of a disaster to any single facility.
In addition, the company continues to expand and refine its bandwidth utilization in order to meet demand for new and improved advanced services. A key component to reclaiming bandwidth was the digital delivery of video channels that were previously distributed in analog through the launch of digital simulcast, which duplicates analog channels as digital channels. Additionally, the deployment of lower-cost digital customer premises equipment, such as HD digital transport adapters, enabled the use of more efficient digital channels instead of analog channels, thus allowing the reclamation of expanded basic analog bandwidth in the targeted systems. This reclaimed analog bandwidth is being repurposed for other advanced services, such as additional HDTV services and faster Internet access speeds.
To support the company’s mobile business, it has a nationwide mobile core network with multiple interconnection points (including Texas, California, Illinois, and two in New York), as well as the necessary interconnection points for its network partners T-Mobile and AT&T Inc. (‘AT&T’), Appalachian Wireless, and US Cellular.
Suppliers
Customer Premise and Network Equipment
The company purchases set-top boxes and other customer premise equipment from a limited number of vendors because its cable systems use one or two proprietary technology architectures. The company buys HD, HD/DVRs, and VOD equipment, routers, including the components of the company’s home communications platform, and other network equipment from a limited number of suppliers, including Altice Labs (Altice Europe's technology, services, and innovation center), Sagemcom, and Ubee. The company also purchases outside plant material and equipment, including fiber optics and copper components, to support the expansion and maintenance of its networks.
Broadband and Telephone Connectivity
The company delivers broadband and telephony services through its HFC and FTTH network. It uses circuits that are either owned by the company or rented from third parties to connect to the Internet and the public switched telephone network. The company pays fees for rented circuits based on the amount of capacity available to it and pays for Internet connectivity based on the amount of IP-based traffic received from and sent over the other carrier's network.
Mobile Voice and Data Equipment
The company purchases for resale mobile handsets from a number of original equipment manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung, and Motorola. Customers of the company’s mobile service are able to purchase these handsets with upfront or installment payments.
Intellectual Property
The company relies on its access to the proprietary technology of Altice Europe, including through Altice Labs, and licenses to the name ‘Altice’ and derivatives from Next Alt.
Competition
Broadband Services Competition
The company’s broadband services face competition from broadband communications companies' digital subscriber line (‘DSL’), FTTH/Fiber to the Premises (‘FTTP’), and wireless broadband offerings, as well as from a variety of companies that offer other forms of online services, including satellite-based broadband services. AT&T, Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. (‘Frontier’), and Verizon Communications Inc.'s (‘Verizon’) Fios are the company’s primary fiber-based competitors. T-Mobile fixed wireless, Verizon fixed wireless, and AT&T Internet Air are the company’s primary wireless broadband competitors. Frontier offers DSL and FTTH broadband service and competes with the company in most of its Connecticut service area, as well as parts of its Texas and West Virginia service areas.
Video Services Competition
The company’s video services face competition from cable providers, as well as direct broadcast satellite (‘DBS’) providers, such as DirecTV (which is co-owned by AT&T) and DISH Network (a wholly-owned subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation, ‘DISH’).
The company’s video services also face competition from a number of other sources, including companies that deliver movies, television shows, and other video programming, including extensive on-demand, live content, serials, exclusive and original content, over broadband Internet connections to televisions, computers, tablets, and mobile devices, such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+, YouTube TV, Amazon Prime, Sling TV, DirecTV Stream, and others.
Telephony Services Competition
The company’s telephony service competes with wireline, wireless, and VoIP phone service providers, such as Vonage, Skype, Facetime, WhatsApp, and magicJack, as well as companies that sell phone cards at a cost per minute for both national and international service.
Mobile Wireless Competition
The company’s mobile wireless service faces competition from a number of national incumbent network-based mobile service providers, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, and smaller regional service providers, as well as a number of reseller or MVNO providers, such as Tracfone, Boost Mobile, and Cricket Wireless, among others.
Business Services Competition
The company operates in a highly competitive business telecommunications market and competes primarily with local incumbent telephone companies, especially AT&T, Frontier, Lumen Technologies, Inc. (‘Lumen’), and Verizon, as well as with a variety of other national and regional business services competitors.
Advertising Services Competition
The company competes for advertising revenue against, among others, local broadcast stations, national cable and broadcast networks, radio stations, print media, social network platforms (such as Facebook and Instagram), online advertising companies (such as Google), content providers (such as Disney), connected TV providers, advertising agencies (such as Omnicom Group), measurement platforms, and digital advertising platforms.
Regulation
The company’s collection, use, disclosure, and other handling of information is subject to a variety of federal and state privacy requirements, including those imposed specifically on cable operators and telecommunications service providers by the Communications Act.
The FCC's rules require the company to ensure that persons with disabilities can more fully access the programming it carries.
The company allocates its end-user revenues and remits payments to the universal service fund in accordance with FCC rules.
The company also contributes to federal funds to meet the shared costs of local number portability and the costs of North American Numbering Plan Administration.
The company provides traditional telecommunications services in various states through its operating subsidiaries, and those services are largely governed under rules established for CLECs under the Communications Act.
Under the FCC's intercarrier compensation rules, the company is entitled, in some cases, to compensation from carriers when they use the company’s network to terminate or originate calls, and in other cases, it is required to compensate another carrier for using its network to originate or terminate traffic. The company allocates its end-user revenues and remits payments to the universal service fund in accordance with FCC rules.
The company’s mobile wireless service is subject to most of the same FCC and consumer protection regulations as typical network-based wireless carriers (such as E911 services, local number portability, privacy protection, and constraints on billing and advertising practices).
The company’s provision of Internet services subjects it to the limitations on use and disclosure of user communications and records contained in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.
The company’s i24NEWS operation has employees and offices in the European Union (‘EU’) that are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’). Further, the company’s Optimum Media business conducts limited business with customers that advertise in the EU and in the United Kingdom (‘UK’). As such, the company has certain compliance obligations with EU member states, as well as UK laws and regulations, including compliance obligations under the GDPR and UK GDPR, and bears potential enforcement risks and fines if it fails to comply, even as the application of those regulations to some of its operations are unclear or unknown.
History
Altice USA, Inc. was incorporated in 2015 in Delaware.
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