As part of its newly announced campaign to place all of its acquired assets under its own brand, Altice has confirmed that both the Optimum and Suddenlink brands will soon disappear from the U.S. cable landscape.
“Yes, all consumer-facing brands across the globe will change," said an Altice spokesperson, confirming that Suddenlink Communications will go extinct, right along with the last vestiges of Cablevision. Altice NV of the Netherlands closed its acquisitions of Suddenlink and Cablevision last year. But other than using the Cablevision sub-brand “Optimum” to refer to the Bethpage, New York, service, the U.S. brands have been kept intact.
Not so any more.
Altice also said that SFR in France, Portugal Telecomm and MEO of Portugal, along with Orange and Tricom in the Dominican Republic will transition to the Altice moniker by the second quarter of 2018.
Ditto for the Cablevision business services unit Lightpath, which will be renamed Altice Business.
RELATED: Altice’s Goei: ‘We are having discussions’ about wireless
This week, Altice founder and CEO Patrick Drahi visited the Bethpage offices of the erstwhile Cablevision, which has become the headquarters of the European conglomerate’s American operation, Altice USA.
Drahi poured a little cold water on comments made a day earlier by U.S. division CEO Dexter Goei, who said Altice USA was actively discussing entering the wireless business.
“I have always been very clear, that first is fixed [networks], then mobile, then content,” Drahi said, in comments reported by Multichannel News. “We started in the U.S. with cable. We are too small in cable to go mobile at the moment. But everything is open. We will see.”