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.”

Altice Group has launched the first of a batch of R&D centers, called Altice Labs, in Portugal this week, while announcing plans to open up similar facilities in the U.S., France, Israel and Dominican Republic in the “coming months.”  

According to Telecompaper, PT Portugal’s R&D unit, PT Inovacao, has been merged with Altice Labs.

Altice, which completed its acquisition of Suddenlink Communications and is pursuing a deal for Cablevision Systems, said the labs will benefit 200 million people in more than 35 countries where Altice has customers.

Altice Labs will support “thousands of engineers,” with expertise spanning telecommunications hardware, business support systems, digital services and, of course, TV.

Notably, the launch and anticipated expansion of Altice Labs comes as CableLabs, the U.S.-based industry R&D consortium with global partnerships, reorganizes to focus on longer-term “innovation projects.”

“Altice Labs will be integrated into local ecosystems, through partnerships with universities, corporate networks, and start-ups, to become full participants in innovation in each country,” according to a summary on the plan.

Altice Group began to discuss its lab plans in November 2015, when the company outlined several strategic initiatives, including the introduction of an advanced home gateway, a multiscreen subscription VOD service, a rebranding of the Numericable and Virgin brands in cable in favor of a new one, SFR. Altice also announced the establishment of a procurement company for the group that will negotiate with suppliers.

Suddenlink Communications announced last week on its official blog that the MSO has rolled out its residential 1-Gig service to three more areas: Georgetown, Texas; Lake Charles, La.; and St. Joseph, Mo..

Suddenlink, which is being acquired by Altice Group,introduced its 1-Gig (downstream) offering, paired with a 50 Mbps upstream, in July using DOCSIS 3.0 technology. The standalone offering runs about $109 per month, but comes at a reduced price when paired with other Suddenlink services.

All of Suddenlink’s residential broadband services come with usage-based policies that charge extra for additional buckets of data if customers exceed their monthly allotments.  The top data plan posted online is fitted with a monthly soft cap of 550 gigabytes.

With the latest trio of markets included, here’s an updated list of areas where Suddenlink has rolled out its residential gigabit offering:

-Arkansas: Jonesboro, Russellville.

-Arizona: Flagstaff.

-Louisiana: Bossier City and Lake Charles.

-Missouri: Nixa, Ozark, and St. Joseph.

-North Carolina: Greenville and Rocky Mount

-Oklahoma: Enid and Stillwater

-Texas: Abilene, Andrews, Big Spring, Bryan, College Station, Huntsville, Georgetown, Kingwood, Lubbock, Lufkin, Midland, Terrell, Tyler and Victoria.

Suddenlink, which added 21,600 high-speed Intenet subs in Q3 2015, unveiled Operation GigaSpeed in August 2014, announcing that it intended to raise its top downstream high-speed Internet speed to 1 Gbps in 90% of its footprint by 2017. 

At a dinner last week celebrating his 20th year as host of HBO’s sports magazine show Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, veteran TV journalist Bryant Gumbel said the show’s mission to cover the issues, personalities and controversies of the sports world hasn’t changed since its launch in 1995.

And, in Gumbel’s view, that keeps his Peabody Award-winning show unique.

More than 220 episodes and 28 Sports Emmys later, Gumbel said that not enough of today’s sports media outlets are as committed to delivering hard-hitting, investigative news stories as Real Sports is.

“I still think what passes for sports coverage is sadly sycophantic,” the 67-year-old Gumbel told The Wire during the dinner at New York’s Aureole restaurant. “Obviously there are exceptions — I’d like to see more exceptions — but the money has become so big now and there’s so much competition that it’s di_ cult for a show that’s interested in pursuing truth to find subjects to do it with, because they all have their own networks.”

Gumbel called the athlete-supported The Player’s Tribune website a shining example of the new sports outlets that blur the lines of news, social media and public relations. On that site, athletes post their own stories and videos in an effort to talk directly to the fans.

“This is what it’s come to?” Gumbel said. “That’s where you go to tell your story? And we’re supposed to believe that? The version [of a story] you want is the one we’re supposed to buy — no questions asked? That’s a bad world.”

As to whether today’s sports media has tainted the viewer’s perception of sports news, Gumbel said he’s not sure the modern viewer “can discern the difference between a well-researched, objective, critical piece and an infomercial. My suspicion is not, and that’s kind of sad.”

Gumbel’s show returns with a new episode on Sunday, Dec. 22.

— R. Thomas Umstead

Cristiano Ronaldo’s Altice Ads Headed to U.S. Airwaves

When European telecom giant Altice gains a foothold in the United States — after completing the purchase of Suddenlink Communications, expected to happen before year’s end — U.S. audiences will start seeing the French telecommunications firm’s ads with its new spokesman, Portugese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo is one of the world’s bestknown athletes. At the London premiere of his self-produced year-in-the-life film, Ronaldo, he was given a plaque commemorating his stature as the “most liked” person on Facebook.

Altice said the Real Madrid star’s “speed and power complement the international development of the Altice Group’s core businesses: high-speed broadband (fiber and 4G), content and media.”

Altice ads featuring “CR7” will soon be seen in Portugal, France and Israel, and adapted later in Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Dominican Republic and the United States. Altice also is buying Cablevision Systems, for $17.7 billion, but that deal is expected to close after the Suddenlink merger.

— Mike Farrell

Offering a possible view into how Altice Group's future tech strategy might play out as it prepares to enter the U.S. market, its SFR unit in France has introduced a new, souped up gateway, initially for FTTP networks, and a multiscreen subscription VOD service for its fixed and mobile platforms.

And there are other big changes on the horizon, as Altice, which has deals in place to acquire Suddenlink  Communications and Cablevision Systems, reportedly will drop the Numericable and Virgin brands in France and put everything there under the SFR banner. Additionally, 62 Numericable stores will be closed, and six will be rebranded under the SFR banner, Génération Câble reported.  

“The group’s premium offers will be carried by a single brand for fixed and mobile, SFR, which is better adapted to the group’s strategy,” Altice said in a recent memo, according to Le Parisien. “The Numericable brand will first be dropped for new customers and eventually for the installed base, with the aim of migrating customers towards SFR.”

The company has also launched Altice Labs, according to Génération Câble, which was live tweeting an Altice meeting held November 9 in Paris featuring chief exec Dexter Goei and Michel Combes, the recently named COO of the group. Altice has also established a procurement company for the entire group that will negotiate with suppliers.

Back to the product-facing activity, SFR is set on November 17 to launch “Box Fibre Zive,” a new set-top box/gateway that bake in a 1-Gig fiber modem, eight tuners, a new UI, a show “restart” function,  support for 4K/Ultra HD video, integrated NFC and Bluetooth, 802.11ac WiFi, and a 500 gigabyte hard drive.

The box, which will be available to 7.4 million eligible connections will also let subs integrate and control other devices, such as Chromecast dongles, gaming consoles and Blu-ray players, through an HDMI pass-through capability.

The combo, “gives the set-top box a central role in the household,” the operator said. A key objective is to establish an “open ecosystem of innovation and strategic partnerships,” an industry source added.

On the content end, SFR is also launching Zive, a multiscreen SVOD service that will offer a library of more than 5,000 HD shows (with a roadmap to 15,000 by the end of 2016), and almost 600 in 4K/UHD and be available exclusively to its fixed-line and mobile customers.

The SVOD product, which will launch by end of year for  €9.99  (US$10.73) per month, will present titles in four categories: Kids, Series, Cinema and Fun – and offer content from studio partners such as Disney/Pixar, ABC Studios, Viacom, Mediatoon, Warner Bros, Europa, Miramax, Sony Pictures Television, and France Télévisions.

Additionally, Altice's Portugal Telecom unit is pushing a plan to build over 18,600 miles (30,000 kilometers) of fiber optic cable in five years, passing an average of 600,000 homes per year, or 3 million homes by 2020. When completed, the network will reach 5.3 million homes (2.3 million now, plus 3 million more by 2020). 

PT said the resulting network, which will enable new NGPON2 technology to coexist with legacy GPON, will evolve from 2.5 Gbps down by 1.25 Gbps upstream, to deliver symmetrical speeds of 40 Gbps and 80 Gbps, the company said.

In France, the Altice said it will extend fiber to 12 million homes passed by the end of 2017, 18 million homes passed by the end of 2020, and 22 million homes passed by the end of 2022. 

It’s DirecTV’s turn to mock the cable industry over its recent M&A moves aimed at achieving more scale across the board.

DirecTV, now part of AT&T, has launched a humorous ad about the fictitious merger of Cable Corp Inc. and CableWorld, seemingly a jab at the failed Comcast-Time Warner Cable, the pending deal between Charter Communications, TWC and Bright House Networks, or Altice's proposed deals for Suddenlink Communications and Cablevision Systems…or just maybe all of them in one fell swoop.

“We all know that DirecTV’s better at this whole TV thing, so to beat ‘em, we’re going to get bigger, we’re going to merge with CableWorld,” proclaims the Cable Corp. chief, played by Jeffrey Tambor.

 “That company stinks,” another Cable Corp. exec (John Michael Higgins) chimes in later. “And I mean they smell. I used to work there. I had to breathe through my mouth the whole time.”

And then Fred Willard, playing the big cheese at CableWorld, delivers the punchline. Well, we don’t want to blow it…just see it for yourself:

Update: And here's the ad about how things are going at CableWorld, post-merger, which will start airing later this month (other ads in the campaign will also air this fall):

The DirecTV ads, which are revival of the company's “Empty Cable Suit” commercials from 2008 that also featured Higgins, comes in the wake of recent ads from Comcast that jabbed at the AT&T-DirecTV merger and Charter Communications’ anti-satellite TV campaign.

http://www.multichannel.com/news/content/charter-ads-take-jabs-satellite-tv/393896

Comcast’s campaign, which was initially launched in markets such as Chicago, Miami before spreading to other MSO markets and complemented by radio, print and digital ads, starts out: “This is the dawn of an old day, because AT&T and DirecTV are offering yesterday’s technology…today.” Then proceeds to talk up satellite TV’s problems in rainy, windy and even “branchy” conditions.

See it here:

Charter, meanwhile, has enlisted Saturday Night Live alum Kevin Nealon to play Captain Telstar, commander  of the aging Satellite TV Headquarters vessel that launched in 1994:

Who says advertising’s dead? 

Altice Group turned a few heads this week with claims that it could squeeze $900 million in synergies from its proposed $17.7 million acquisition of Cablevision Systems.

While deep cost-cutting is expected to play a big part in helping Altice reach that goal, the company could face major challenges harmonizing the technical operations of  Cablevision and its other U.S. cable pursuit – Suddenlink Communications.

While Cablevision and Suddenlink operate residential services on similar HFC networks, their product game plans differ greatly. It’s too early to say whether Altice will pick winners and losers from each camp or look to adopt technologies and platforms it’s using today in Europe.

However, Altice chairman Patrick Drahi did shed some light on how the company might improve technical operations when he spoke Thursday (September 17) at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference in New York. The plan for Cablevision’s relatively dense network involves pushing fiber deeper and eliminating the electrified amplifiers required between the home and the fiber node (Comcast, per Light Reading, has been utilizing this sort of “N+0” architecture in markets it is deploying its fiber-based Gigabit Pro residential 2 Gigabit per second broadband service).

“We need to push the fiber and get rid of the amplifiers,” Drahi said, suggesting that the cost of running the Cablevision network should be about half the cost of running Altice’s network in France. “It is a little more expensive for your capex. But it is for a short period of time because you eliminate your electricity bill. The good thing is when you do that you don’t have any more amplifiers and you don’t have to pay to maintain the amplifiers. The whole cycle of expense decreases just by the simple measure, which is to push further the fiber.”

By product category, here are some of the big differences between Cablevision and Suddenlink’s tech-driven product strategies.

Video boxes/platform

Suddenlink: Next-gen approach driven by TiVo boxes and TiVo-powered devices equipped with broadband connections, CableCARD security, and integration with Netflix and other apps.

Cablevision: Boxes from Samsung and others that run a new form of downloadable security platform that relies on tech from Cisco/NDS.

Network DVR

Suddenlink: None

Cablevision: MultiRoom DVR service lets subs record up to 15 shows at once.

Home security/automation

Suddenlink: Offers service based on the Alarm.com platform.

Cablevision: None.

WiFi Network:

Suddenlink:  Limited largely to support in in-home devices.

Cablevision: More than 1 million quasi-public hotspots through deployment in home-side routers and in business and public locations. Part of Cable WiFi roaming alliance with Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks.

Wireless Voice Service:

Suddenlink: None

Cablevision: Launched Freewheel, a WiFi-only offering, in February.

Broadband Speeds

Suddenlink: As a component of its Project GigaSpeed project, the operator recently began to roll out a 1 Gigabit per second residential tier in select markets that leans on a new DOCSIS 3.0-powered device from Hitron Technologies Americas.

Cablevision: Its top residential cable modem tier tops out at 101 Megabits per second.

Broadband Usage Policies

Suddenlink: Has rolled out a monthly data plan whereby customers can purchase buckets of additional data for $10 if they exceed their monthly allotment.

Cablevision: Residential broadband service is uncapped and unlimited.

-Multichannel News Senior Finance Editor Mike Farrell contributed to this report. 

In an expected move, Patrick Drahi's Altice Group said it has inked a deal to sell Portuguese assets Cabovisao and ONI to Apax France, a private equity fund, for an undisclosed sum.

That agreement comes after the European Commission required Altice to shed those assets as a condition of its €7.4bn acquisition of Portugal Telecom from Brazil-based Oi.

Altice said the deal is subject to regulatory review by the EC and Portuguese authorities. Perella Weinberg Partners advised Altice on the transaction.

The asset sale also comes amid Altice’s increasing interest in building up in the U.S., a strategy that’s being led off by Altice's proposed $9.1 billion acquisition of Suddenlink Communications.

Michel Combes, the former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, was recently named COO of Altice Group and as chairman of the board of Numericable-SFR.

European telecom giant Altice confirmed Monday that it has hired former Alcatel-Lucent CEO Michel Combes as COO of the group and as chairman of the board of Numericable-SFR.

Early on, Combes will be tasked with restructuring Altice’s operations. He also comes on board as Altice makes a push into the U.S., initially via a proposed $9.1 billion acquisition of St. Louis-based Suddenlink Communications.

Prior to helming Alcatel-Lucent, Combes, 53, served as CEO of Vodafone Europe, chairman and CEO of TDF, and CFO and SVP of France Telecom.

“I am very pleased that Michel, whom I have known for over 20 years, has decided to join us to help structure the Group's operations and to harmonize our best practices throughout our subsidiaries and countries,” Patrick Drahi, president of Altice, said in a statement. “He will bring a solid experience both in mobile and fixed operations and is a talented and appreciated manager. The Group will continue to attract key talent to help manage our rapid expansion in both Europe and the Americas whilst maintaining our unique entrepreneurial mindset.”

 “We are extremely pleased with the arrival of Michel Combes, one of the most experienced and knowledgeable executives in the Global Telecom industry,” added Altice CEO Dexter Goei. “His deep experience in the international telecom sector will help significantly reinforce our ability to successfully operate and integrate all of our affiliates and to continue to grow our footprint in new territories.”

Time will tell how Altice Group’s proposed acquisition of Suddenlink Communications affects the U.S. MSO’s video strategy in the months and years ahead (Suddenlink has been working closely with TiVo), but it’s clear that both companies have something in common on the broadband side of the business—the pursuit of gigabit speeds.

Altice Group has already signaled that it will deploy DOCSIS 3.1, a next-gen IP platform for HFC networks designed to pump out multi-gigabit speeds. In April, Altice announced it would tap Cisco Systems’ “evolved” Converged Cable Access Platform (we now know it as the cBR-8) to serve as the foundation for its migration to D3.1, starting with Numericable in France.

Suddenlink, meanwhile, unveiled Operation GigaSpeed in August 2014, announcing plans to raise its top high-speed Internet speeds to 1 Gbps in 90% of its footprint by 2017. The MSO hasn’t revealed a technology roadmap for that initiative, though it’s expected to involve today’s DOCSIS 3.0 platform, factor in D3.1 when that technology is ready for prime time, and possibly include FTTP, at least in targeted, greenfield situations.