Looks like Altice USA is planning on skipping the DOCSIS 3.1 party. The company revealed plans on Wednesday for a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network rollout with the ability to deliver speeds of up to 10 Gbps. The operator reports it will extend fiber deeper into its existing HFC network in the United States and leverage proprietary technologies developed by its research and development arm, Altice Labs. Altice USA says it is the first major U.S. cable provider to announce a large-scale fiber deployment plan for its footprint, which includes Optimum and Suddenlink customers.
In a Wall Street Journal interview, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei says he thinks DOCSIS 3.1 will only get cable so far, but fiber will remain a superior technology and yield faster speeds. “We know that there will be applications and demand for further bandwidth going forward, whether that is in two, three, four, or five years,” Goei tells the WSJ. He also adds that he believes 5G wireless will never match the performance of fiber.
Altice USA’s news comes several weeks after Google Fiber confirmed it was pulling back on its potential ultra high-speed broadband deployment plans in several cities as it looked into a hybrid approach involving both fiber and fixed wireless options. Google’s recent acquisition of Webpass, a company that focuses on high-speed data deployments to residences and businesses primarily using point-to-point wireless, is part of the mix.
Dubbed “Generation GigaSpeed” by Altice, the five-year deployment schedule is slated to begin in 2017. The company reports it expects to reach all of its Optimum footprint and most of its Suddenlink footprint during that timeframe. Beyond speed, the new architecture is expected to result in a significant reduction of energy consumption, and the operator says it will reinvest efficiency savings to support the buildout without a material change in its overall capital budget.
Which markets will see the initial rollouts? That hasn’t been revealed, but Altice says they “will be announced in the coming months.”
Altice acquired Suddenlink in 2015, and completed its acquisition of Cablevision/Optimum earlier this year. It has been enhancing services to those subscribers, tripling internet speeds to up to 300 Mbps for residential customers and 350 Mbps for business customers in its Optimum footprint. Around half of the Suddenlink service area has seen 1 gigabit rollouts, according to the operator.
