Altice USA Adds 47 NJ Schools

Late last week, the USA division of Altice revealed the extent of its recent progress in the education vertical. The company’s Lightpath metro fiber division has connected another 47 New Jersey schools and school districts to its regional network in the NYC metro area.

That makes 110 in all over the last two years as part of New Jersey’s Digital Readiness for Learning and Assessment Project, which is a very strong presence in the state’s education bandwidth marketplace. Highlighted in this particular announcement was Bergen County Academies, a high profile public magnet high school in Hackensack.

Lightpath became part of Altice as part of the purchase of Cablevision, and while the cable MSO side of that deal got most of the press I’ve been curious to see what Altice does with Lightpath’s footprint and customer base as well as the similer assets that came with SuddenLink. In all, Atlice USA reaches a total of 14,000 on-net buildings, with 8,000 of those in the NYC metro area.

Altice is said to be considering an IPO for Altice USA, possibly as a means toward financing additional acquisitions.  The targets generally mentioned in connection with that idea are other cable operators, but I don’t think we can discount the possibility that the French company and its billionaire owner Patrick Drahi might have a more general appetite and go after other infrastructure assets.

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Categories: Cable · Metro fiber