Altice USA took the wraps off of Economy Internet, a low-cost broadband service for eligible families and seniors in the operator’s Optimum systems covering portions of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Altice USA is offering the new, cap-free tier, which delivers up to 30 Mbps downstream, for $14.99 per month, plus in-home WiFi via a free “smart router,” access to the operator’s Optimum WiFi network of more than 1.5 million hotspots, and up to three email accounts.

The rollout comes a more than five months after Altice closed its acquisition of Cablevision Systems in June. Tied in, Altice had committed to introduce the low income broadband option throughout the Cablevision service territory. That commitment is referenced in the FCC order allowing the deal, and, in June, the New York State Public Service Commission approved the agreement with conditions that included a pledge that included the low-cost broadband option.

The service’s 30 Mbps downstream capability exceeds the FCC’s current definition of wireline  “broadband” -- 25 Mbps in the down direction.

Charter Communications recently launched a similar low-cost broadband offering linked to its acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Comcast’s Internet Essentials program stems from a condition of its NBCU deal.

RELATED: Charter Launches Low-Cost Broadband Service

Altice launched its program in several pilot areas in the tri-state area, and unveiled it at an event Wednesday (Nov. 30) at the BronxWorks Carolyn McLaughlin Community Center that featuring actor and New Yorker John Leguizamo, Council Member Vanessa L. Gibson, and Altice USA co-president and COO Hakim Boubazine.

Altice USA said it’s working with community organizations such as BronxWorks to promote the new offer to qualified households, and is working with hundreds of tri-state area community centers and libraries to provide a free broadband modem in computer labs and other public spaces.

Altice USA is initially offering the low-cost broadband service in Norwalk, Conn.; The Bronx, Brooklyn and Yonkers and the Brentwood portion of Long Island, N.Y., and Newark and Paterson, N.J. The MSO said it will launch it in more areas in the following months and have it offered across its entire Optimum footprint for the start of the 2017-2018 school year. The service is available to families who qualify for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and seniors who qualify for Supplemental Social Security (SSS).

“Altice USA is committed to serving our local communities with the products and services that connect people to the things that matter most,” Boubazine said in a statement.  “Whether using the internet for schoolwork, researching career opportunities and current events, or staying in touch with relatives, we are glad to enable those connections for more families and seniors with this new low-cost Optimum broadband solution.”

“It is a pleasure to help Altice USA announce its new ‘Economy Internet’ service, which provides many households in the Bronx and across the tri-state area with an affordable option for internet,” added Leguizamo. “I am always excited to speak with young people about seizing opportunities in order to achieve success, and it is community institutions like BronxWorks and programs like Altice USA’s low-cost broadband that can enable today’s youth to put their goals within reach.”

Altice said it has added Paul Haddad to its management team as global chief data officer, where he will head up the creation of an analytics practice across the company’s telecom and media subsidiaries.

Additionally, he will head up the launch of the company’s local and global advertising solutions and “drive the development of innovative products and pricing strategies in each of our territories,” the company said.

Haddad, who reports to Altice Group CEO Michel Combes and Altice chairman and CEO Dexter Goei, will also continue to expand Altice USA’s advanced data analytics business.

Haddad had been serving as SVP and GM, advanced data analytics at Cablevision Media Sales. Altice closed its acquisition of Cablevision Systems in June.

“Paul has a deep expertise in how data analytics and advanced advertising can maximize media opportunities for clients across all platforms, and he is the ideal executive to bring these solutions to our businesses across the globe,” Combes said, in a statement.

“As a proven leader in the evolving advertising and data insights landscape, we are enthusiastic that Paul will continue to drive the ongoing development of the U.S. data analytics business,” Goei added.

Haddad, Altice said, brings it 20 years of entrepreneurial and multi-national experiences in the fields of big data analytics, advanced advertising, programmatic, optical networking, wireless backhaul, and network management. Haddad is also late of Concurrent Computer Corp.,  Solusia Technologies and Nortel Networks.

He holds an electrical engineering degree from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), speaks five languages, and holds multiple patents in the advanced data & information management systems, as well as bandwidth trading domains. 

Altice USA confirmed that it recently eiminated about 1% of its employee base as the company moves ahead on an integration plan following its recent acquisitions of Suddenlink Communications and Cablevision Systems.

Newsday reported that the cuts affected about 100 employees at the MSO’s Bethpage, N.Y. headquarters, focused on areas such as IT, accounting and human resources.

An Altice USA spokesperson confirmed that “less than 1%” of employees were impacted as those corporate, non-customer facing roles were eliminated earlier this month. Those people will receive severance and help with outplacement services. Altice USA also has about 100 jobs currently posted across various functions, including service and sales.

"As we look to strengthen our operations in the nation’s most competitive market, Altice USA is committed to building a customer-centric organization focused on the evolving needs and demands of our Optimum and Suddenlink customers,” Altice USA said in a statement. “In the coming months, our customers will begin to see some exiting changes in our service offerings, including speed increases, new products and a superior service experience.”

Among those initiatives, Altice USA plans to increase broadband speeds via investments in network upgrades, including its WiFi network, and to launch a low-income broadband offering. It’s also working on a “home center” that integrates the functions of the set-top box, the router and modem, as well as a next-gen customer interface that will tie in VOD, online content and recommendation tools. 

Hank Ratner, the former vice chairman of Cablevision Systems, has been named president and CEO of Independent Sports and Entertainment (ISE),  a New York-based firm that represents more than 300 of athletes in the NBA, NFL and MLB.

Ratner is also coming on board as ISE closed a $30 million investment from Ron Burkle through The Yucaipa Companies. Burkle has also been tapped to serve as chairman of the board for ISE.

ISE said the funding will be used to fuel growth and expansion, noting that it has retained top agents and clients from Relativity Sports to launch the sports management divisions of the company, which will be headed by Mark Pieper & Fernando Cuza (ISE Baseball), Dan Fegan (ISE Basketball), and Roosevelt Barnes & Doug Hendrickson (ISE Football).

ISE, which plans to seek additional venture investment opportunities in the area of sports and entertainment technology, said its role is to secure marketing, business and endorsement opportunities across the film, television, fashion, live event, retail and hospitality industries for its clients.

Ratner joins ISE soon after Altice closed its acquisition of Cablevision. Ratner recently joined TiVo chairman Tom Rogers in a $3.4 million series A investment in WinView, which is developing a free mobile app that enables users to win cash prizes by making situational predictions during live TV sporting events. Ratner is also a former president and CEO of The Madison Square Garden Company.

“Independent Sports and Entertainment will include the best and the brightest talent in the industry representing some of the top names in sports,” Burkle said, in a statement. “Hank is one of the most respected leaders in the business with a unique and broad portfolio of experience that perfectly positions him to transform ISE into a leading sports, media, entertainment and management company, providing the very best for our clients on and off the field.”

“I have great respect for Ron and am excited to partner with him, along with our first-class executive team in Mark, Fernando, Dan, Roosevelt and Doug, to build Independent Sports and Entertainment,” Ratner added. “I look forward to expanding upon our world-class sports management business, finding new strategic partnerships and investment opportunities to broaden our portfolio and help make ISE a global industry leader. We are focused on building a company that will create a platform for our clients to benefit through all stages of their careers.”

Soon after closing its acquisition of Cablevision Systems, Altice has launched its U.S.-focused Web site, including a page dedicated to its new leadership team for the region, as well as key stats for Altice USA (i.e. more than 18,000 U.S. employees, 4.3 million residential customers, and 350,000 business customers)

And Altice USA has posted a corporate video. Take a look:

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us for the next six months, really getting ready for 2017, where hopefully we’ll show our colors even more than we do today,” Altice USA chairman and CEO Dexter Goei told Multichannel News.

Altice USA chairman and CEO Dexter Goei isn’t looking to make any immediate major changes as its $17.7 billion purchase of Cablevision Systems comes to a conclusion.

Instead, the head of the fourth largest cable operator in the country with about 4.6 million subscribers in 20 states is going to take his time in whittling two medium-sized operators – Altice purchased 1.5-million subscriber Suddenlink Communications in December – into the lean, efficient machine that Altice N.V. founder Patrick Drahi envisioned when he first agreed to buy the cable company back in September.

Goei, who gave up the CEO spot at Altice N.V., the European cable, telecom and wireless magnate, to take the top spot at the U.S. cable operations, said Job 1 will be to continue to intertwine the various Suddenlink and Cablevision management teams adapt to Altice’s way of thinking and the things the company wants to achieve. After that, the focus will be on operations, combining the various back office units and making sure both companies are using the same suppliers and equipment. That, he said, should take the next six months.

Altice USA has named some of its top officers already. Joining Goei at Altice USA are co-president and chief financial officer Charles Stewart and co-president and chief operating officer Hakim Boubazine. Former Cablevision employees making the transition included Lisa Rosenblum, general counsel; Lee Schroeder as head of government affairs; Media Sales president Ed Renicker, chief accounting officer Victoria Mink; and News 12 Networks president Patrick Dolan. Altice USA named former Comcast/NBCUniversal exec Michael Schreiber chief content officer last week.

On the operations side, former Cablevision SVP of infrastructure engineering Pragash Pillai will head up the Optimum operations, while David Gilles, former Suddenlink SVP of operations, Southwest region, will head up the Suddenlink unit. Former Suddenlink president of commercial and advertising operations  Kevin Stephens is president of business services, and former Suddenlink chief technology officer Terry Cordova becomes CTO for the entire company.

Rounding out the top executives, Suddenlink SVP of sales Gregg Graff will become head of residential sales; former Cablevision SVP of branding Matthew Lake will be chief marketing officer; Cablevision CIO Keith Sherwell becomes CIO of Altice USA; and former Cablevision SVP of human resources Colleen Schmidt will be head of human resources and talent development.

For the time being, the Optimum and Suddenlink brands will remain the same.

“We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us for the next six months, really getting ready for 2017, where hopefully we’ll show our colors even more than we do today,” Goei said.

One of the biggest questions ever since the deal was first announced was how Altice was going to extract $900 million in costs from Cablevision’s business. Goei said those cost savings will come over a span of four to five years and will involve some easy wins like reducing corporate overhead and more efficiently managing the business. Others will have a longer time line, like upgrading the networks and the customer experience with new home equipment and determining which vendors to use.

“Those things take time,” Goei said, adding that the financial goal is to double Cablevision’s cash flow margins from its current 20% to more than 40% over the next five years.

Some critics have said that the only way to achieve its cost cutting goal is to decimate customer service. Goei said that couldn’t be further from the truth: “Why would we ever do that? Why would we ever make our customers unhappy that they would want to churn and go somewhere else? That’s not what we’re talking about. This is not about doing large cuts in the workforce.”

As part of the approval process, Altice promised the New York State Public Service Commission that it would not cut any customer-facing jobs for four years after the deal closes. That should keep the customer service force intact for at least that time.

While the NYS PSC took its time in finally approving the deal, Altice moved relatively smoothly through the regulatory process, winning Federal Communications Commission approval in May with few conditions and getting the nod from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities later that month.

But at the same time, the federal government appears to be cracking down on cable service, particularly on the broadband side, reaffirming net-neutrality rules last week and going forward with an “unlock the box” set-top proposal that has had heavy pushback from the industry. Despite the potentially onerous regulatory environment, Goei said he wasn’t concerned. As a European telecom service provider, Altice is all too familiar with sometime overzealous regulatory agencies.

“Nothing really surprises us from a regulatory standpoint, given how aggressive the European regulators are,” he said.

And though a  newcomer to the U.S. cable business, Goei added that Altice has its roots in entrepreneurship – Drahi grew up on the streets of Morocco and built a global telecom empire before he was 52 years old, modeling his business in part after John Malone’s Liberty Media.

“I would line him [Drahi] up with any other entrepreneur out there,” Goei said.

Goei himself has a an interesting background – the son of a Beverly Hills obstetrician, he received a degree in Foreign Service from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1993. He joined Altice in 2009 after 15 years as an investment banker with J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley.

Drahi also is replacing another legendary entrepreneur, Cablevision founder and chairman Charles Dolan. As one of the founding members of the modern cable industry, Dolan had his hand in practically every major development in the cable business in the past 50 years, from the formation of Home Box Office to the advent of broadband. But as acquisitions and consolidation has taken hold, that club has dwindled in size.

Altice USA could help whittle down that list even further – it has said it would be interested in acquiring other cable operations, especially Cox Communications – but not in the short term, Goei said.

“Absolutely not today,” Goei said of other acquisitions. “We’re very focused on integrating our business. 2016 was a year of integration and operation. Thereafter we’ll see. It would be an outright misdirection to tell you we won’t acquire something again. But we are not focused on that today.”

Altice announced a reorganization of its group management structure as the company nears the close of its proposed acquisition of Cablevision Systems.

Among the moves, Dexter Goei has been tapped as chairman and CEO of Altice USA and president of Altice N.V., and named Michel Combes to the post of CEO of Altice N.V.

Earlier, also in expectation of the growing U.S. video business, Altice named former Comcast and NBCUniversal executive Michael Schreiber as chief content officer.

Combes, the former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent (now part of Nokia), joined Altice as COO in September 2015. In his new role, Combes will continue his day-to-day responsibilities for Altice Group and have all operating affiliates, country CEOs and corporate functions report to him. Combes will also join the Altice N.V. board as director.

Goei stepped down as CEO of Altice N.V. to focus on the integration of Cablevision and Suddenlink (acquired by Altice in late 2015), the company said.

Goei, who will also replace Patrick Drahi as president of Altice N.V. and continue to lead its global M&A activities, is also tasked with the further development of Altice’s U.S. division.

Drahi, a founder a controlling shareholder of Altice, will continue to head up the strategic, operational and technology agenda for the group, and will lead a newly-formed Altice Group Advisory Council, the company said.

Altice said the revised structure “is reflective of the global presence of Altice N.V. centered around Europe and the US and ensures critical senior leadership, entrepreneurial spirit and best-in-class management in both regions.”

The reorganization comes just days after the New York State Public Service Commission approved, with conditions, Altice’s proposed purchase of Cablevision Systems, removing a final hurdle in the $17.7 billion deal.

“I am extremely excited about our U.S. business which is accounting for approximately 40% of our group and offers huge development opportunities,” Drahi said in a statement. “Dexter exemplifies the entrepreneurial and commercial spirit of Altice and will provide the same vital leadership to our U.S. business he displayed when building the Altice Group in the last 8 years with me.

“Since joining us last year,” Drahi continued, “Michel has been instrumental in structuring and harmonizing our operations and strengthening our management teams across the board. I am very pleased to work with him in his new role as the Altice Group embarks on its next phase of development. I look with full confidence into the future: the Altice Group has never been in a stronger position.”

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities has approved Altice N.V.’s $17.7 billion purchase of Cablevision Systems.

The matter was approved at the regulatory agency’s Wednesday board meeting.

“Altice is pleased with the approval order by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for the acquisition of Cablevision, which recognizes the benefits that the proposed merger will bring to consumers in New Jersey,” Altice said in a statement. “The transaction is expected to close on track in the second quarter of this year.”

The deal still needs to receive approval from the New York State Public Service Commission, which is scheduled to vote on the transaction on June 16. If the deal passes muster from that agency, it is expected to close shortly after. The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal on May 4.

Cablevision has about 783,058 customers in New Jersey, but its largest operations are in New York.

“The Board is confident that the settlement will provide current customers many network improvements and upgrades, as well as ensure adequate levels of customer service are maintained” said New Jersey Board of Public Utilities president Richard S. Mroz in a statement. “The agreement also protects most current Cablevision employees and creates a low-income broadband service that will benefit certain seniors and homes with school-aged children.”

According to the BPU, as part of the approval, Altice/Cablevision agreed that it will not reduce customer-facing jobs, including those at customer service centers and the Newark call center for 2 years; will upgrade service to all existing customer locations to 300 Mbps by the end of 2017; will offer low-income broadband service with speeds up to 30 Mbps with no data cap, modem fee or charge for self-installation at $14.99/ month, within 15 months of the merger closing; will increase the speed on its existing $24.95 low-cost broadband service offering from 5 mbps download /1 mbps upload to 10 mbps download /1 mbps upload within 120 days of closing and will continue to offer for 2 years; and will offer a broadband product without a data cap for 3 years.

With its $17.7 billion purchase by Dutch telecom company Altice nearing a close, Cablevision said it added 9,000 customer relationships in the first quarter, it's best first quarter turnout in that metric since 2012, fueled mainly by growth in broadband customers.

Cablevision lost about 15,000 video customers in the period -- nearly half the 28,000 it lost in the same period last year -- and added 19,000 high-speed Internet customers. Phone subscribers declined by 8,000 on the period.

The subscriber losses beat analyst consensus estimates of a deficit of 19,000 video customers. Cablevision also outpaced analysts' predictions for earnings per share and AOCF. 

Overall revenue was up 1.6% and adjusted operating cash flow rose 5.6% in the period. At its cable operations, revenue rose 2% and AOCF was up 5.7%.

The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger with Altice earlier this week. The New York State Public Service Commission is expected to give its bid up the deal later this month.

"Cablevision had an excellent first quarter," CEO James Dolan said in a statement. "The company continued to build momentum with solid improvements in service quality and subscriber growth, and achieved the best first quarter performance in customer relationships since 2012. The transformation of the Optimum experience over the past three years reflects the success of our management team and employees in providing the best products, services and experience to our customers. In addition, we are moving full speed ahead towards the completion of our transaction with Altice, and are proceeding through the regulatory process as expected."

Altice continues to line up financing for its pending $17.7 billion purchase of Cablevision Systems, raising about $8.6 billion in new debt and readying the placement of about $1.8 billion of its own stock.

Altice announced Sept. 17 that it planned to acquire Cablevision in a deal including about $10 billion in cash and $7.7 billion in assumed debt. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2016. 

Altice agreed in May to acquire privately held mid-sized cable operator Suddenlink Communications for about $9.1 billion. With Cablevision’s 2.6 million video customers, Altice would have nearly 4 million video customers in the U.S., making it the fourth largest cable operator in the country.

There had been some concern that raising the debt for the Cablevision deal would be costly, as interest rates on high-yield debt deals have risen in the past several weeks. 

According to Altice, it raised $8.6 billion in new debt, including a $3.7 billion 7-year senior secured term loan; $1 billion of 10-year senior guaranteed notes and $3.8 billion of 7-year  and 10-year senior  unsecured notes.

Altice said the average cost of the Cablevision financing is 7.6% and the average tenor is 7.9 years. When combined with the retained debt at Cablevision ($5.9 billion), the total Cablevision debt financing is about $14.5 billion, with an average tenor of 6.7 years and average cost of 7.5%. In addition, Cablevision has secured a 5 year $2 billion revolving facility, ensuring ample room to meet Cablevision’s liquidity needs.

Regarding the stock sale, Altice said Thursday that it has successfully placed $1.8 billion in newly issued shares, including 69.99 million  Altice A shares  at $19.05 per share and 24.8 million Altice B shares  at a price of $19.05 per share.

Application will be made to list the placing shares on the Euronext Amsterdam exchage. Settlement is expected to take place on Oct. 5 and is subject to customary closing conditions, at which date the placing shares are expected to be admitted to trading on Euronext Amsterdam. Altice has agreed, subject to customary carve-outs, to a 90 day lock-up on its class A and class B shares. J.P. Morgan acted as Sole Global Coordinator and Bookrunner. Barclays, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs International acted as Joint Bookrunners for the placing.