Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei revealed the operator’s long-talked about multi-gig service launch is fast approaching and it expects to announce the first of hopefully many broadband grant wins in the coming weeks.
Speaking during an investor conference, Goei said Altice in recent months has stepped up promotional activity in areas where it overlaps with Verizon’s Fios service in order to “keep the pressure up” on its competition. He added it could soon gain the upper hand in their ongoing battle.
“By the time we’re at multi-gig, which will be at the end of the second quarter, we’ll probably for the first time have a better product than them on fixed line ever,” Goei stated. “Now, we don’t expect to see a lot of subscribers, but it’s nice from a branding and a customer awareness standpoint for us to have the best network in the tri-state [New York, New Jersey and Connecticut] area relative to them.”
Goei didn’t specify what multi-gig service tier Altice is planning to offer. However, in May 2021 he stated it was aiming to launch a 10-gig product within 18 months. Verizon Fios recently debuted a 2-gig service in parts of New York City.
The CEO stated on a recent earnings call that around 15% of Altice’s customer base takes gigabit speeds, leaving plenty of room for step ups.
Its planned multi-gig launch comes as Altice plots an ambitious expansion of its fiber footprint, aiming to blanket a total of 6.5 million locations by the end of 2025. Goei said that figure could actually go as high as 7 million if builds subsidized by broadband grants are factored in.
“We expect to be bidding on 500,000 to a million homes,” he said of its subsidy ambitions. “Hopefully we get a third of those.”
Goei said it expects to announce its first subsidy win in the next few weeks, noting the forthcoming contract is for a four-year build covering around 10,000 homes. Despite the long timeframe, he added it’s aiming to finish construction in 18 months.
“As you build out you get subsidy money…so you’re incentivized to try and get it done as quickly as possible and also prove out that you’ve got the execution capabilities to do it” so that can be used as a proof point when bidding on future grants, he said. “So, we’re going to be very focused on trying to deliver things as quickly as possible and way inside the time limits.”
Migrations
Altice ended 2021 with 1.2 million fiber passings. As its network continues to expand, Goei said the operator is beginning to actively push customers to migrate over from its legacy infrastructure. He added that’s because it’s seeing better performance and satisfaction metrics on its fiber network.
For instance, Goei said fiber has a 30% lower incident rate compared to HFC, 55% better net promoter scores, 6% to 8% higher ARPU and lower churn.
“It’ll probably accelerate more in the end of the second quarter, but we’re starting to push migrations,” he said. “We want to get as many people onto our fiber network as possible because the stats aren’t lying.”