Altice Broadband Subs Could Stabilize Next Year: CEO

While Altice continues to lose broadband subscribers, that rate of decline from quarter to quarter is slowing and could stabilize in 2024, CEO Dennis Mathew said Wednesday afternoon in a call with analysts as Altice announced Q3 results. He said Altice’s East footprint fiber customers all have 8 Gbps symmetrical speeds available, and the company is expanding 8 Gbps symmetrical availability. He said the company ended the quarter with 91% of its West footprint upgraded to DOCSIS 3.1, and 1 Gbps is available to more than 95% of its overall footprint. In addition, Altice is simplifying its broadband speed tiers, and as part of that is retiring a number of low-end speed tiers, said Mathew. The company said Q3 marked Altice's third straight quarter of mobile line growth acceleration, ending Q3 with 4.2 million residential broadband customers, down 100,000 year over year; 2.2 million video subs, down 250,000; 1.6 million telephony subs, down 250,000; and 288,000 mobile lines, up 52,000. Revenues were $2.3 billion for the quarter, down $77 million year over year. Asked about the traditional pay-TV video marketplace, Mathew called it “broken” as consumers increasingly shift from linear to streaming, but linear costs continue to rise.