The acquisition of several US regional broadband providers by the Dutch telecom conglomerate Altice is proving a boon to subscribers, who will eventually see their Internet download speeds jump to 10Gbps.
The speed boost will roll out over the next five years, Altice announced this week. It will harness a next-generation fiber optic network that will reach subscribers of Altice subsidiaries Optimum and Suddenlink. Optimum mainly serves customers in New York City and its suburbs, while Suddenlink's operations extend to 16 states in the South and Midwest.
Rolling out fiber optic cables to individual residences and businesses in the US has proved complicated. New York City in September threatened to sue Verizon for breaking a commitment to bring its Fios cable TV and Internet service to every household in the city.
It also hasn't resulted in huge speed increases. Fios is locked in an almost perfect tie with Comcast's Xfinity service in PCMag's latest survey of the fastest ISPs. Both services averaged 49.6 Mbps for downloads and uploads.
Related
- The Fastest ISPs of 2016The Fastest ISPs of 2016
Fiber connections are much more prevalent in Europe, Altice's home turf. The company claims it will connect 22 million French households with fiber by 2022, and it plans to equip the entire country of Portugal—5.3 million homes—with fiber by 2020.
In addition to the upcoming fiber rollout, Altice has already proven its ability to raise Internet speeds in the US: since its 2015 aquisition of Cablevision, Optimum's parent company, it claims to have already boosted Optimum residential customers' speeds to 300Mbps. Suddenlink customers now have 1Gbps broadband service.
The challenges facing Altice's fiber rollout could be considerably easier than those that Verizon faces, both because of technological advantages since Fios was born and Altice's much smaller footprint. While the speeds that individual subscribers experience will vary greatly depending on their Wi-Fi routers and many other factors, the next five years will still give Altice's US customers reason to be excited.