Altice USA (NYSE:ATUS) has commenced design and construction on its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network deployment for several hundred thousand homes in parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The company expects the network to reach 1 million homes by the end of 2018.
Altice USA announced plans for the FTTH deployment last November. The fiber network, which is expected to take 5 years to build, is planned to cover the company's entire footprint and to provide throughput of up to 10 Gbps.
Altice Founder Patrick Drahi joined Altice USA Chairman and CEO Dexter Goei at a fiber deployment site on Aug. 11 on Long Island, New York, to see Altice's fiber crews in action.
"We are incredibly pleased with the progress we are making on our fiber investment and look forward to lighting up this new, advanced network to enable innovative products and services to support our customers' connectivity needs well into the future," said Goei.
In addition to its fiber investment, Altice USA continues to upgrade services on its existing HFC network. The company has expanded gigabit broadband service to more than 60% of its Suddenlink footprint, including recently launching gigabit service in seven cities in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Additionally, the company more than tripled its Internet speeds in its Optimum footprint, now offering broadband speeds of up to 400 Mbps for residential customers and 450 Mbps for business customers.