WideOpenWest shares were up more than 12% Thursday after a report in Bloomberg News claimed the Denver-based overbuilder was “exploring options” including a sale.

According to the Bloomberg report, people familiar with the matter say WOW has hired an adviser to drum up interest in the company.

WOW spokesperson Jamie Mayer declined comment, adding that the company does not comment on rumor and speculation.

WOW shares closed at $20.02 each on Thursday, up 12.5% or $2.23 per share, as investors scrambled to take advantage of a possible deal. The stock was up another 3% in after-hours trading April 7 to $20.75 each. 

Despite Thursday’s rise, WOW stock is still down about 7% for the year. 

Based in Denver, WOW has about 532,900 subscribers and last year sold systems in five markets to Astound Broadband and Atlantic Broadband (now Breezeline) for a combined $1.786 billion. WOW's largest individual shareholder is Crestview Partners, the New York-based private equity fund that counts cable pioneer Jeffrey Marcus as its vice chairman. Marcus retired as a partner at Crestview in 2019, but is still WOW's chairman of the board. The company CEO is long-time telecom executive Teresa Elder, who joined WOW in 2017. 

Full year 2021 revenue was down 1% to $725.7 million and cash flow rose 9% to $261.6 million. WOW ended 2021 with 532,900 voice, video and data subscribers, up 10,000 from the prior year. The company operates in 14 markets in Michigan, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. 

Deal multiples have risen in the past few years, with Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners’ $8.1 billion purchase of Astound Broadband one of the highest — an estimated 14.1 times cash flow. Given that multiple, WOW could be worth as much as $3.65 billion, but even at more traditional multiples of 7 times to 10 times cash flow, the company could fetch between $1.8 billion and $2.6 billion.

Possible suitors could range from private equity and other financial players to strategic buyers like Altice USA (whose bid to buy Atlantic Broadband in 2020 was rebuffed by that operator’s Canadian parent); Astound Broadband (which purchased WOW’s Anne Arundel, Maryland; Chicago; and Evansville, Indiana systems last year for $661 million); and Breezeline (which purchased WOW’s Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio systems last year for $1.125 billion). ■

Newly rebranded cable company Atlantic Broadband, now calling itself "Breezeline," has announced that the phased rollout of its new cloud-based pay TV service will begin in New Hampshire in February. 

Owned by Canadian telecom giant Cogeco Communications, Breezeline announced the rebranding last week as a means of better describing a cable company that recently expanded by 688,000 passings with the purchase of WideOpenWest systems in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, placing it well beyond the Eastern Seaboard region that spawned its earlier moniker. Breezeline also serves parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina and Florida.

While touting its rebrand, the cable company also announced a new live-channel service that will bundle in 300 hours of cloud DVR HD recording along with access to popular OTT apps, including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney Plus "and more."

Breezeline, which has partnered with TiVo for video technology for several years, will run on an Android TV backbone, a company rep confirmed. This explains the platform's casting capabilities through Google Chromecast, as well as Google Assistant features. 

Breezeline will require that customers lease (or buy?) at least one of its proprietary Evolution-made set-top boxes, powered by TiVo and Android TV software, to receive the Breezeline Stream TV service. But additional rooms can be powered by Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV gadgets, as well. 

Breezeline hasn't specified how much its set-top will cost. 

“It’s an incredibly advanced TV service, with unparalleled features and personalization options, yet really simple to use. Customers can easily view what they want, when they want and where they want," said Heather McCallion, VP of products and programming for Breezeline, in a statement.

Breezeline ended Q3 with 360,000 remaining linear pay TV customers. Notably, a number of its WOW! customers had access to WOW! tv+, another Android TV-powered cloud-based IPTV platform.■

Atlantic Broadband, several months after closing its $1.125 billion purchase of systems in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio from WideOpenWest, said it will rebrand its systems throughout the country under the Breezeline name, and added that it plans to launch a streaming video product — Breezeline Stream TV — later this year.

Atlantic Broadband, part of Canadian telco Cogeco Communications, had operated primarily on the East Coast, but said in a press release that the addition of the Ohio systems prompted the name change. The company closed on the purchase of the WOW systems, which pass about 688,000 homes and have nearly 200,000 broadband customers, in September. 

“We’re no longer just an East Coast provider, and we’ve long offered much more than broadband, so our company identity must evolve with us,” Atlantic Broadband president Frank van der Post said in a statement. “The name Breezeline marks the beginning of a new, exciting era of transforming our company through new growth, while also elevating the customer experience through enhanced customer care options, innovative products and investment in the latest technologies.”

Atlantic Broadband began expanding its fiber network last year, and plans to extend its reach to more than 70,000 homes in New Hampshire and West Virginia with its fiber-to-the-home technology. 

Breezeline Stream TV is a cloud-based video offering that will allow customers to access live and recorded programming on compatible devices in and out of the home. The service will be available in select markets early this year and will expand throughout 2022. 

Atlantic Broadband said it will introduce Breezeline in its existing markets beginning today (January 10) and the former WOW communities will transition to the new moniker by the summer. The company also has launched a series of new customer care initiatives, including enhanced self-service options, a new online experience and simplified, transparent pricing. A new customer app is planned for release early this year.  

“The Breezeline name was chosen to convey our commitment to providing easy access to connected experiences for our customers,” Breezeline VP of marketing Julie Sullivan said in a press release. “The Breezeline logo, a five-point pinwheel, represents our customers and the communities we serve, the innovation and services that enrich customers’ lives and the elevated experiences we strive to provide in a seamlessly connected world. The pinwheel also implies motion — symbolic of both high-speed connectivity and the ease with which customers can interact with our company and services.”

Atlantic Broadband is the eighth-largest cable operator in the U.S. and provides residential and business internet, TV and voice services to customers in 12 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. ■ 

After a two-year run where stocks in the sector nearly tripled, riding a wave of unprecedented broadband growth, cable shares wiped out in 2021 amid fears that the slowdown in high-speed internet customer growth will be worse than even the most pessimistic analysts expect.   

Only one cable distribution stock appreciated during 2021 — WideOpenWest — and that was mainly due to its M&A activity. WOW shares nearly doubled to $20.87 on Dec. 21 from $10.67 on Dec. 31, 2020, fueled by its decision to sell off systems in two separate deals with Atlantic Broadband and Astound Broadband that brought in a combined $1.8 billion. While those deals and some private transactions helped to boost overall valuations for the sector, it had little effect on other publicly traded stocks, which have been rocked by concern that the inevitable slowdown in broadband growth would be worse than originally expected

Cable companies saw unprecedented broadband growth in 2020, fueled by the pandemic and stay-at-home orders that forced Americans to work, play and go to school from home. But in 2021, as students began to return to class and workers to their offices, that growth began to slow. In Q3, broadband subscriber additions were  well below expectations and fueled concerns that Q4 growth could be even weaker.

That all had an effect on cable distribution stocks, which despite WOW’s dizzying rise, fell a collective 17.5% in 2021. Altice USA was the biggest decliner, dropping 52.1% for the year after reporting a loss of broadband customers in Q3 and hinting that Q4 could be negative as well. Altice was followed by Cable One, which saw its stock drop 22.2% in 2021 after five years of double-digit increases. Rounding out the sector was Comcast, down 5.6% for the year and Charter Communications, down 2.6%. 

Media Struggling Overall

While doom and gloom has enveloped the cable business, no sector in the media business was spared. Telco and satellite stocks dropped nearly 8% for the year despite speculation that AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Communications would begin to chip away at cable’s broadband lead with increased investment in fiber networks. Dish Network, which pushed the launch of its first wireless market to early 2022, fared the best, dipping less than 1% for the year to $32.04 per share from $32.34 each on December 31, 2020.

Programming stocks, which were boosted earlier in the year by direct-to-consumer offerings, felt the pain later in the year as their subscriber rolls began to soften. Like distributors, programmers saw only one stock rise for the year -- Fox Corp., which increased about 28% from $28.77 per share to $36.90 each. But that still wasn’t enough to offset declines at other programmers, with the sector down about 11.6% for the year.    

MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett has called the concern that the telcos’ attack on cable broadband will lead to an equally bloody cable advance on wireless, the Convergence Apocalypse. But he sees the risks posed to both sectors as asymmetric, adding that cable is in a superior position on nearly every dimension. 

In a handful of reports Moffett showed that not only does cable have better mobie virtual network operator (MVNO) economics — its margins should hold even after substantial price cuts — but its coverage is better because its wireless service can be bundled with broadband virtually everywhere.  

“By contrast, Verizon can bundle their national wireless service with fiber in only 11% of the country,” Moffett wrote. “AT&T can bundle their national wireless service with fiber in only 13% of the country. Tying a national service to a tiny wireline footprint would be a nonsensical strategy.” 

Also: Fear of, Desire For M&A Drives Cable Stocks in Q2 

Moffett isn’t suggesting that the broadband slowdown won’t happen. He just believes it won't be as bad as some are predicting. 

“The forces arguing for a slowdown aren’t going away, and any serious forecast has to assume steady deceleration,” Moffett wrote. “But it is possible to be too pessimistic.”

Ready for the Downturn

He noted that cable operators have been preparing for the slowdown for years, and they are steadily expanding their networks through edge-outs and other means to increase the number of homes they can market for service. 

For example, he pointed to Charter, which is growing its homes passed by about 2%, or 1 million homes per year. About 600,000 of those additional homes are via edge-outs, and Moffett estimated that assuming reasonable penetration rates, that alone could mean an additional 500,000 net additions per year.    

“And that’s before their footprint expansion from RDOF [the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund], the rural subsidy program that will add yet another million homes passed to their footprint over the next five years,” Moffett wrote. 

Barclays Group media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar wasn’t so sure. In a Dec. 20 note to clients, Venkateshwar wrote that he sees telcos having a broadband advantage over cable next year. He estimated that Comcast and Charter, the two largest cable companies in the country, could each add less than 1 million broadband customers each in 2022, their lowest growth levels ever.

While telcos could account for the bulk of 2022 broadband growth with a combination of fixed wireline and fixed wireless offerings, Venkateshwar noted that if the cable-telco broadband gap widens in 2022, cable operators are not likely to take that switch sitting down and could step up pricing discounts to attract share.

Also: Rutledge Says Cable Mobile Service Pricing Could Drop Further 

That could be risky, though, because Venkateshwar noted that the marginal costs for delivering fixed wireless is a lot lower for telcos.

“Therefore, telecom companies will be more incentivized to price fixed broadband at attractive levels instead of re-pricing their wireless back books to compete with cable,” Venkateshwar wrote. “We also believe cable companies have fewer degrees of freedom on wireless because of a locked-in variable cost structure which limits their ability to respond to handset promotions from wireless operators.”

But he added that might depend on the size of the volume based wholesale pricing stepdown embedded in the cable companies’ MVNO agreements. Both Charter and Comcast recently restructured those agreements with Verizon. 

“If cable companies have more operating leverage than usual MVNO deals because of their recent wholesale deal modification with Verizon, then the competitive backdrop for both wireless and wireline broadband could get equally bad,” Venkateshwar wrote.

Also: Metaverse or Meh-taverse?

On the technology side, the so-called FAANG stocks — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google — did well, with the sector up a collective 16.8%. Apple had the largest percentage gain (31.2%), followed by Facebook (now Meta), up 22.3%; Netflix (11.9%) and Amazon (4.6%). ■ 

Months after obtaining several franchise agreements in New Hampshire and West Virginia that allowed it to overbuild Comcast markets in those states, Atlantic Broadband said Tuesday that it will invest $82 million to extend its fiber network into communities and businesses in those areas it doesn’t currently serve.

The effort will affect about 70,000 homes and businesses in several communities  throughout New Hampshire and West Virginia already served by Comcast. In a press release, ABB said it has obtained or is in the process of obtaining franchise agreements in Concord, Dover, Somersworth, Durham and Madbury, New Hampshire; and in Westover, Morgantown, Granville and Star City, West Virginia.   

Overbuilding cable systems is nothing new, and several small operators have obtained franchises to compete with large and medium-sized cable  companies over the years. Comcast obtained a franchise to provide service in nearby Rochester, New Hampshire in 2017, a market that was already served by ABB’s MetroCast Cable, and both companies have appeared to flourish. 

Also: Greener Pastures

“We are grateful to the communities that have received our franchise applications with such enthusiasm, as consumers in these locations will soon have a new choice in providers,” ABB president Frank van der Post said in a press release.  “We look forward to serving these communities by delivering superfast internet, cloud-based TV, and a phenomenal customer experience as we pursue our high-growth plans.”

ABB said the first customer activations are expected in early 2022 and that it will notify local residents as construction is completed throughout the year in each area. The company said once the fiber builds are complete, residential and business customers will receive ultra-high speed internet service, a “WiFi Your Way” managed WiFi service that expands coverage throughout the home; an IPTV video service; unlimited wireline phone service, and business class communications with internet speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second, hosted voice, 4G Backup, and advanced fiber services.

In the city of Somersworth, which approved ABB’s franchise in June, city economic development manager Robin Comstock said the “community benefits when there are good choices of providers and services. The state-of-the-art fiber infrastructure will provide a new option for residential and business members of our community, help drive economic vitality and keep us ahead of the technological curve.”

Atlantic Broadband is part of Canadian telecom service provider Cogeco Communications, and in September snapped up WideOpenWest properties in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio that added about 690,000 homes-passed to its footprint for about $1.125 billion. ■

WideOpenWest said it has completed the sale of its Ohio-area properties to Atlantic Broadband for $1.125 billion. 

The sale of the systems -- in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio -- was first announced in June. WOW said it would use about $1 billion of the proceeds to pay down debt. 

WOW said a separate deal that was announced at the same time as the Atlantic Broadband deal -- the sale of properties in Chicago; Evansville, Indiana; and Ann Arundel, Maryland to Astound Broadband for $661 million -- is on track to close in Q4.

“The closing of this deal with Atlantic Broadband is a significant step in the execution of our broadband-first strategy, at a critical time in our industry,” WOW CEO Teresa Elder said in a press release. “Our strengthened balance sheet bolsters our ability to invest in key growth areas as we continue to provide reliable, accessible and fast broadband solutions to our customers across our remaining service areas. And we are confident that Atlantic Broadband will be a good steward for our Ohio service area employees and customers.”

Atlantic Broadband is part of Canadian telecom company Cogeco Communications, and the purchase of the Ohio systems is expected to beef up its presence in the U.S.

"This acquisition significantly advances our market expansion strategy in the United States," Cogeco CEO Philippe Jetté said in a press release. "We are looking forward to continuing to bring innovative services, competitive pricing, customer-centric support and operational excellence in these markets."

The Cleveland and Columbus systems pass about 688,000 homes and businesses, and serve about 196,000 internet, 61,000 video and 35,000 telephony customers as of March, according to Atlantic Broadband. 

"We are excited to welcome WOW! customers and colleagues to Atlantic Broadband as we continue to make major progress in our growth strategy," Atlantic Broadband President Frank van der Post said in a press release. "We will work to provide an easy transition for our customers as we integrate operations in the short term and, in the years ahead, we look forward to introducing innovative service enhancements that will ensure our continued leadership in these markets."

BofA Securities is acting as financial advisor to WOW!, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, as well as Honigman LLP, are serving as legal counsel.

Atlantic Broadband said it will launch ESPN's ACC Network (ACCN) on its systems Sept. 1.

ACCN carries more than 500 games — regular season and tournament — over 27 sports involving schools from the collegiate Atlantic Coast Conference, plus news and information and original programming. Combined with its digital ACCNX platform that totals more than 1,500 ACC events annually.

Atlantic Broadband, a top 10 cable broadband provider, will offer the games on its expanded basic variety tiers in states with an ACC school and on digital basic family in other markets.

The games can also be accessed via the ESPN app.

“We are excited to add tremendous value to our channel lineups with the addition of ACCN,” said Heather McCallion, VP of products and programming at Atlantic Broadband. “This latest enhancement will bring fans of the Atlantic Coast Conference the biggest matchups in college football and much more just as the season begins."

The ACC schools are Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, University of Louisville, University of Miami, University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, Notre Dame, University of Pittsburgh, Syracuse, University of Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.

Two weeks after telling a Wall Street audience that rising valuations could help it pay down debt, WideOpenWest reached agreements to sell systems in five markets with a combined 324,000 broadband customers to Astound Broadband and Atlantic Broadband for $1.786 billion, a deal some analysts believe highlights the sometimes glaring gap between private and public market valuations for cable companies. 

WOW agreed on June 30 to sell systems in Chicago; Anne Arundel, Maryland; and Evansville, Indiana; to Astound Broadband for $661 million. At the same time, Atlantic Broadband agreed to buy the overbuilder’s systems in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio for $1.125 billion.

WOW said it would use the proceeds to reduce leverage from its current 5 times forward-looking cash flow to 2.5 times, and fund ongoing expansion of its network through edge-out programs and greenfield construction. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

The deal comes after WOW chief financial officer John Rego said at the Credit Suisse Virtual Communication conference on June 15 that the company, if it wanted to pay down debt more quickly, could do so by “selling a market or two.”

The deal multiple works out to about 11 times cash flow, in line with recent private cable transactions that averaged between 12 and 15 times EBITDA. 

B. Riley Financial media analyst Daniel Day, who raised his 12-month price target on the stock to $30 per share after the deal, wrote in a research note that WOW was trading at about 8 times cash flow before the sale, further highlighting the disparity between public and private valuations. 

He wrote that the gap is even steeper on a broadband subscriber basis, where WOW’s $4,578 enterprise value per broadband customer is 60% less than its peer group.

“In our view, a 30% to 40% ‘overbuilder discount’ is more appropriate,” Day wrote, adding at that level, WOW’s share price would be $35.

The sale helped push WOW stock up more than 17% ($3.09 each) to $21.34 on June 30. The shares were trading at $21.61 each in afternoon trading on July 2. 

For Astound, which agreed in November to be purchased by Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners for $8.1 billion, the deal will significantly boost its presence in two of its top markets.

According to the deal, Astound will receive about 128,000 residential and business customers from WOW. The addition of the WOW systems will double Astound’s Chicago homes-passed to about 800,000 residences, while increasing its Washington, D.C. footprint (Anne Arundel is near Baltimore) by about one-third.

In Chicago, Astound competes against Comcast and AT&T, and in Washington, D.C., it goes up against Comcast and Verizon’s Fios. Astound CEO Jim Holanda said the added bulk will give it more of an advantage in what has already been a healthy competition. 

Big Boost in Chicago, D.C.

“I like to think we have been a strong competitor in both of those markets, certainly in the 11 years we’ve been operating RCN, and I would expect to continue to be a strong competitor against them in these two markets as we go forward,” Holanda said. Atlantic Broadband will receive about 196,000 internet, 61,000 video and 35,00 telephone customers in Cleveland and Columbus as part of the deal. In a press release, Cogeco Communications president and CEO Philippe Jetté said the deal will add “significant scale” to its U.S. business, raising its total internet customers by about 38%. In addition, the purchase will mean Montreal-based Cogeco will generate more than half of its revenue in the U.S.

Atlantic Broadband has traditionally stuck close to East Coast markets  so the WOW deal represents “a major step” in its strategy, ABB president Frank van der Post said in a press release. 

“The Ohio broadband systems’ geographic fit with our Pennsylvania operations, combined with our success in winning customer share in competitive markets and our experience integrating acquired properties, will ensure operational efficiencies, a seamless transition for customers, and strong growth in these markets,” van der Post said. 

Shortly after agreeing to purchase three WideOpenWest properties in the Midwest for about $661 million, Astound Broadband CEO Jim Holanda said the deal will double his company’s potential presence in the Chicago area, adding key neighborhoods in the city’s south side and western and northwestern suburbs, while growing its footprint in Washington, D.C by about one-third. 

Astound was one of two companies that agreed to buy five properties from WOW for a combined $1.786 billion. Atlantic Broadband agreed to purchase WOW’s Cleveland and Columbus Ohio systems, with about 196,000 customers, for $1.125  billion. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year.

For Astound, the WOW deal is its first substantial purchase since agreeing to be bought by private equity company Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners for $8.1 billion. That deal, first unveiled in November 2020, is set to close shortly. In an interview, Holanda said the final government approval -- of the 259 that were required -- is expected from the California PUC in about four-to-six weeks.

“We’re looking forward to getting that last one done,” he said.  

Astound includes RCN, Grande Communications, enTouch Communications and Wave Broadband, and is the sixth largest cable company in the country, operating in eight states and Washington, DC. The WOW deal involves about 128,000 residential and business customers and passes a collective 700,000 homes. Also as part of the deal, Astound agreed to purchase WOW’s Evansville, Indiana operations, with which it has no adjacent systems. 

Also Read: Executive of the Year: True Patriot 

But it appears that the deal will have its biggest impact in Chicago. RCN has been offering service in Chicago since 1999, primarily in what is known as Area One (downtown, the north side along Lake Michigan and extending to the northern and northwestern suburbs). The Anne Arundel purchase will boost Astound’s presence in Washington D.C., where it has been operating since 1996, by about one-third. 

“Dating back maybe seven or eight years, we’ve had conversations with WOW’s management team about Chicago because we knew it would be a good fit,” Holanda said. “For whatever reasons they decided to formally put the process in place to explore potential sale opportunities for certain assets. Clearly the Chicago and Maryland cluster they put on the market was designed for our interest given the close proximity to our existing operations and networks. We’re very happy it all came to fruition over the past few weeks and months.” 

Holanda said the WOW systems are in good shape -- they are DOCSIS 3.1 compliant as are the rest of Astound’s properties -- and won’t require too much upgrade investment. While the penetration rates in those areas are lower than in some other WOW markets, the Astound chief sees it as a growth opportunity. 

“We think there is runway to continue to grow and take share over time,” Holanda said, adding that with the purchase Astound will pass about 800,000 homes in the market. In Washington D.C., the deal expands the footprint to 400,000 homes passed. 

In Chicago, Astound competes against Comcast and AT&T, and in Washington D.C., it goes up against Comcast and Verizon’s Fios. Holanda said the added bulk will give it an added advantage in what has already been a healthy competitive relationship. 

“I like to think we have been a strong competitor in both of those markets, certainly in the 11 years we’ve been operating RCN, and I would expect to continue to be a strong competitor against them in these two markets as we go forward,” Holanda said. “Competing against Comcast and Verizon and AT&T on a regular basis for the past decade, I think we’re always aggressive in trying to sign up customers onto our broadband platform. We’ll continue to do that with the WOW markets once we take ownership."

Astound has been an aggressive participant in the deal market. It was created after TPG bought RCN and Grande Communications in 2016 for $2.25 billion,  and the private equity player later added Wave Broadband in 2018 for $2.36 billion and enTouch Communications in September 2020. Under Stonepeak’s tutelage, Astound closed its purchase of small California fiber company Digital West about a month ago.  

Holanda said that the WOW purchase is no harbinger of a buying binge anytime soon, adding that the company regularly looks at deals as well as organic growth opportunities. 

“Clearly with a new long-term infrastructure equity investor like Stonepeak, being able to do accretive M&A has always been something that we have done,” Holanda said.  “And whether that was with ABRY our original owner, whether it’s been with TPG when we bought Wave [Broadband] and enTouch and now with Stonepeak going after WOW, we’re continuously looking at those opportunities that are on the market and try to create opportunities where we  have contiguous cable properties, that are of interest to us. I think we will obviously continue to do that with Stonepeak. But we are also pretty disciplined when it comes to M&A and we need to make sure that it's going to be accretive and operationally we can take on that challenge on behalf of customers.” 

Other operators have been looking at smaller deals as consolidation has limited the number of players available. In the past 12months, Altice USA, which gave up on its $8.1 billion attempt (with Rogers Communications) to take over Atlantic Broadband parent Cogeco Communications in November, has closed deals for tiny Service Electric Cable TV. of New Jersey for $150 million and North Carolina broadband provider Morris Broadband for about $310 million. 

Holanda added there appears to be more smaller operators willing to do deals than in the past.

“At any given time we have a handful of opportunities that we are evaluating,” Holanda said. “That’s been pretty consistent over the last couple of years. If you think about how cable valuations have expanded over these last four or five years, I do see smaller deals like enTouch and Digital West -- just a couple of thousand homes outside of our Seattle market. We’ll continue to look for tuck-in acquisitions that are contiguous to our existing operations and we think we can provide a long-term investment platform to upgrade and/or integrate into our ecosystem.”

WideOpenWest chief financial officer John Rego said the company had been looking for some time to sell off some assets to take down leverage, adding that the deal unveiled Wednesday with Astound Broadband and Atlantic Broadband represented an opportunity to take down that leverage quickly, and give the company more breathing room to execute its strategy.

Rego, who joined WOW last year from Telaria Inc., said on a conference call to discuss the sale of systems in five markets Wednesday that the company’s leverage ratio was at about 5.5 times forward-looking cash flow in 2020. While leverage was reduced to about 5 times by March 31 of this year, he still believed it was too high.

“Compared to our peer group, we were too highly levered,” Rego said on the call, adding that at the same time deal multiples were rising above the public market trading level for WOW stock. WOW stock was trading at about 8 times cash flow prior to the deal announcement. It valued the June 30 sale at about 11 times cash flow.

“It seemed to us if conditions were right, we could sell off a piece of the company and do a nice deleveraging...The stars were aligned here,” he said on the call. 

Rego added that due to WOW’s hefty Net Operating Loss carry-forwards -- about $1 billion worth -- the company won’t have to take a large tax hit on the sales. He estimated that NOLs will cover about 88% or 89% of the taxes associated with the deal. In addition, WOW will retain more than $200 million of its NOLs after the deal is closed. 

WOW CEO Teresa Elder said that some of the proceeds from the sale will be used to continue edge-out and greenfield expansion programs for its network. While some of the company’s current edge-out efforts were located in the markets it is selling, she said on the call that there remains ample opportunity to expand the network.

WOW has said all along that it is focusing on building out and improving its network, and at the Credit Suisse Virtual Communications conference earlier this month noted that the goal is to move all of its services onto its IP network, which he said at the time could be completed in a couple of years. Investors should get more insight into the company’s strategy at its upcoming Investor Day, expected in the fourth quarter. 

 WOW said that after the deal closes it will provide service in 14 markets with about 532,000 total customers and 502,000 data subscribers. While WOW did not release details on how many subscribers were involved in the sales, Atlantic Broadband parent Cogeco said in a separate release that the Columbus and Cleveland systems had 196,000 internet, 61,000 video and 35,000 telephony customers as of March 31. In its own press release, Astound Broadband said the WOW Chicago, Anne Arundel and Evansville systems had about 128,000 residential and business customers. WOW also said that after the deal closes, its total service penetration rate will rise to 29% from 26% previously. 

In a research note, B Riley Securities analyst Daniel Day estimated the sale price works out to about $5,616 per broadband subscriber, higher than the company’s current valuation of $4,500 per broadband customers.

Day wrote the sale could serve as a catalyst for other stocks in the sector, adding that if WOW’s current 8-times trading multiple were increased to 11 times -- the value of the sale -- its stock would be trading at between $33 and $34 per share. Day had raised his 12-month price target on WOW to $28 per share on June 23.  

WOW stock rose as much as 17% ($3.09 each) in early trading Wednesday to $21.34 each. The stock was priced at $19.42 each (up 9%) at 1:42 p.m. 

WideOpenWest said Wednesday it has agreed to sell systems in five markets in two separate transactions to Astound Broadband and Atlantic Broadband for a combined $1.786 billion, using the proceeds of the sale to pay down debt and fund network expansion.

WOW will sell its Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio systems to Atlantic Broadband in a deal valued at $1.125 billion. Astound will receive WOW’s Anne Arundel, Maryland; Chicago and Evansville, Indiana systems for $661 million. 

News of the deals, expected to close in the second half of 2021, sent WOW stock up 17% ($3.09 each) to $21.34 in early trading Wednesday (June 30)

Atlantic Broadband is part of Canadian telecom and cable operator Cogeco Communications. Last year it was the target of a hostile takeover bid from Altice USA, which with Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications bid more than $8 billion for Cogeco assets. Cogeco, controlled by the Audet family trust, rejected those bids. 

Astound broadband was created last year after private equity firm TPG sold its stakes in RCN, Grande Communications and Wave Broadband to Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners for $8.1 billion. 

Also Read: Executive of the Year: True Patriot 

News of the deal comes about two weeks after WOW chief financial officer John Rego said at an industry conference that the company could sell off portions of its systems if it wanted to deleverage faster. 

“If we wanted to think about deleveraging quicker [and] faster, we could think about selling a market or two of the 19 that we have,” Rego said at the Credit Suisse Virtual Communications conference on June 15. “We’ve done this before. We’ve bought them and we’ve sold them.”

Also Read: Analyst: Astound Sale points to Strong Cable Valuations 

At the time, Rego noted that deal multiples were rising, pointing to Astound's sale to Stonepeak and CableOne’s purchase of Hargray Communications, transactions that he sad were valued at around 12.5 times cash flow. According to WOW, its Atlantic Broadband and Astound deals are valued at about 11 times cash flow.  

WOW said it would use the proceeds of the sale to pare down debt -- it estimates that its leverage ratio will fall from its current 5 times cash flow to 2.5 times after the deal closes. In addition, it will use some for the money to continue its ongoing edge-out program to expand its network in its service territory. 

"We are pleased to reach these two agreements as WOW! takes a significant step toward accelerating our broadband-first growth strategy at a pivotal time in our industry," WOW CEO Teresa Elder said in a press release. "The substantial proceeds from these transactions reflect the attractiveness of our assets and the clear opportunity to expand our position as a trusted provider of reliable, accessible and fast broadband solutions. The divestiture of these markets will enable us to reduce our debt as we continue to execute our broadband-first strategy, including pursuing our Edge-out and greenfield strategies and expanding our commercial services."

WOW will continue to operate in 14 service areas in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, and Tennessee.  On a pro forma basis as of March 31, the company would have had about 532,000 total subscribers, and 506,000 high-speed data revenue generating units. 

The company said it “anticipates some employees from each of the sold markets will remain with WOW, some may be integrated into Atlantic Broadband and Astound Broadband, and others may leave the business.”

BofA Securities is acting as financial advisor to WOW, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz as well as Honigman LLP are serving as legal counsel.

Atlantic Broadband president Frank van der Post said the cable and telecommunications company continues to work hard to restore services to the Champlain Towers South condominiums which partially collapsed June 24, establishing WiFi hotspots in nearby areas to provide connectivity for displaced residents, emergency workers and other members of the community.

Atlantic Broadband is a subsidiary of Canadian telecom company Cogeco Communications and provides internet, TV and phone services to Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida. About half of the 136 one-, two- and three-bedroom units in the 13-story tower fell to the ground on Thursday morning, killing four residents. According to reports, about 159 residents are still unaccounted for and rescue efforts are ongoing. No cause has been given yet for the collapse. 

“On behalf of the Atlantic Broadband team, we extend our heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of all those who suffered the loss of life or sustained injury from the building collapse this morning at Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida,” van der Post said in a statement. “We commend emergency response and search teams who are working on site to rescue those who are trapped in the rubble.”

"As the communications provider for Champlain Towers South, we will work with local officials to restore vital services once safe access is possible," he continued.

Atlantic Broadband is the eighth largest cable company in the country and has about 480,000 customers in 11 states along the East Coast.  

In addition to the WiFi hotspots installed Thursday, Atlantic Broadband said it put up an additional WiFi hotspot Friday (June 25) afternoon at the Emergency Operations Center located at the Grand Beach Hotel (9400 block of Collins Ave).   

The Family Reunification Center that was previously located at the Surfside Community Center has been relocated today (June 25) to the Grand Beach Hotel, the company said.

"Our team remains in touch with local officials so that we can continue to provide assistance as needs develop," ABB  spokesman Andrew Walton said in an email message. 

In his statement, van der Post said ABB “will do whatever we can in the days and weeks ahead to assist the Champlain Towers South community recover from this tragedy.”

The telco threat to push fixed wireless broadband service deeper into less populated markets has sent shivers down the collective spines of cable investors for years. Now with 5G being deployed in various forms by T-Mobile and Verizon, that threat seems more imminent, but according to an influential analyst, operators needn’t worry much, at least in the medium term. 

In a research note Thursday, Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino did a deeper dive into two separate efforts by T-Mobile and Verizon to supplant inferior digital subscriber line service with their respective iterations of 5G. His conclusion: cable operators shouldn’t sweat it out. 

According to Supino, T-Mobile is expected to attract about 3.4 million subscribers to its fixed wireless offerings by 2025, while Verizon , which is taking a different technological approach, should have about 1.3 million fixed wireless customers in their fifth year. Neither effort seems a major threat to cable’s 70% market share of nationwide broadband customers. 

According to MoffettNathanson, in Q3 2020 there were about 114 million broadband subscribers in the U.S., with 78 million coming from cable. Telcos accounted for 34 million broadband customers, so an additional 4.7 million 5G customers isn’t going to move the bar any.   

“While we do see T-Mobile and Verizon gaining fixed wireless broadband subscribers on the margin, neither poses a threat to the future of cable in the medium term,” Supino wrote. “Instead, while we see attractive incremental economics for the telcos where they have material excess capacity, we view both initiatives as constrained by spectrum capacity and/or the physical limitations of available spectrum.”

Those constraints are key. Both T-Mobile and Verizon were expected to sidestep the huge fixed costs of deploying 5G fixed wireless by utilizing spare capacity where it exists. For T-Mobile, that means using its low-band spectrum, which is mainly available in extremely rural areas where there aren’t a lot of homes. Verizon’s excess capacity lies in its MMS spectrum, which is strong on bandwidth, but weak in propagation. According to Supino that means it will work best where the telco already has fiber and small cells -- usually urban areas and high-traffic areas like stadiums and airports.

“Because the service is more competitive with cable, increased competition is a risk, but in most markets, this will resolve in a market dynamic similar to Altice/Verizon FiOS in the North East of the US,” Supino wrote. “Both Altice and Verizon have managed to grow ARPU, despite the greater level of switching between providers.”

T-Mobile has been its usual aggressive self in talking up its 5G service, essentially telling cable providers they had better get ready for a whuppin’ once their service goes live. 

In its Q3 earnings call, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said that the telco was “serious about home broadband.”

“We're coming soon with home broadband,” Sievert said on the call. “We're serious about home broadband. It's going to be an important way that we grow this business and make money, and you have to have the full suite of services to really be able to serve customers there.”

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said back in April 2019 that its millimeter wave rollout lived up to performance expectations, but noted that it isn’t “coverage spectrum,” adding that the company will continue deploying the technology as long as it is “economically feasible.” That admission came shortly after MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett, in a research note detailing Verizon’s Sacramento, California millimeter wave rollout, where the analyst found some serious shortcomings to the technology. 

In his note, Moffett said that while the tech leaves something to be desired, the success or failure of the rollout would come down to economics. 

“At the end of the day, what matters isn’t whether Verizon can make its fixed wireless broadband network work -- of course, they can -- it’s whether they can earn a passable return on their investment doing so,” Moffett wrote in the March 2019 report. 

By Q4 2020, after spending an estimated $40 billion on wireless licenses in the federal C-band auction, Moffett noted it could be a blow to its balance sheet, but that the company desperately needed spectrum. 

In his January note to clients, Moffett wrote that while there remains constraints on growth -- gross and net customer additions were weak in Q4 -- there is some hope.

“Armed with the C-Band spectrum presumably acquired in the auction, Verizon will at last have a path to a sustainable network,” Moffett wrote. “Yes, T-Mobile is still better positioned for 5G, in our view, but Verizon’s early commitment to millimeter wave (Ultra Wideband) has the potential to differentiate their service in urban America, particularly for high value business travelers.” 

Moffett went on to add that he believes the wireless business may be in line for a reordering, with T-Mobile and Verizon “increasingly advantaged,” while AT&T,  because of its industry-leading debt, is “increasingly challenged.” 

While the jury is still out, there have been some early stumbles in the space. Vivint, which initially planned to roll out a fixed wireless service to more than a dozen markets in 2015, its first year, closed its doors in 2020. Starry, a startup that had planned to offer fixed wireless broadband to about 24 markets by the end of 2019, is only in about five markets today.  Even Verizon, despite its claims of millimeter wave’s performance -- it was launched in 2018 amid much hoopla -- hit the pause button last year as it awaited new hardware from Qualcomm and a new self-install process for customers during the pandemic. Last month it said it would increase the number of its 5G millimeter wave sites from 14,000 to 30,000 by the end of the year. But given the small footprint of each 5G cell site -- about 700 feet -- those 30,000 small cells wouldn’t cover an area as large as Delaware, according to a twitter posting by LightShed Partners telecom analyst Walt Piecyk. 

In the meantime, cable is expanding its wireline broadband footprint at a steady pace. At the beginning of the month Charter said it would invest $5 billion over the next few years to bring broadband to an additional 1 million homes.  That’s in addition to the nearly 1 million additional homes it added last year via edge-out programs. Comcast has been doing the same thing at about the same pace.    Smaller operators, like Atlantic Broadband, WOW and Altice USA all have their own smaller scale edge-out plans, and have had success in expanding their broadband reach. 

So suffice it to say that fixed wireless 5G may in fact one day take over the planet. But it won’t be soon.

With its nearly $4 billion bid to acquire Atlantic Broadband all but a memory, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei told analysts Wednesday that the company still wants to grow via acquisitions, and has its eye on a handful of potential “bite-sized” deals. 

“We definitely want to go out there and find attractive MVPDs to acquire,” Goei said on a conference call to discuss Q4 results. He added that while there are a handful of smaller operators to acquire, that field is narrowed, due to geographic and competitive reasons, is further narrowed down to “a couple.” 

Altice USA teamed up with Canadian telecom company Rogers Communications to launch an unsolicited bid for Atlantic Broadband parent Cogeco in a deal valued at about $7.8 billion. Altice USA originally said it would spend $3.6 billion for Atlantic Broadband, upping that bid to about $3.9 billion, but was continuously rebuffed by Cogeco’s controlling shareholder. After several attempts to get a deal done, Altice USA officially abandoned the effort in November.  

Also Read: Altice and Cogeco: He’s Just Not That Into You 

Goei echoed his Q3 comments concerning future M&A, in that small deals, like its July purchase of Service Electric Cable TV of NJ for $150 million, are just as appealing as the bigger transactions.

“The bite-sized, Service Electric-type acquisitions are very attractive for us,” Goei said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to unlock one of those this year. But we’ll continue to try to unlock as many of those as possible.”

Goei said that in the absence of M&A, Altice USA would use those resources to buy back its stock. But he added he wouldn’t turn down a large deal if it came along.

“If something like an Atlantic Broadband comes up for sale, or even a larger size than that, we definitely continue to believe that M&A is the best use of our capital if anything is available,” Goei said.

Cable operators smashed records in 2020, adding more than 4 million customers in the first nine months of that year, fueled in part by the pandemic. But as hopes rise that COVID-19 will loosen its grip on the country, sending more people back to offices and schools and potentially softening broadband gains, many providers are looking toward the fringes of their footprints and extending their networks deeper into less-populated areas for growth.

Extending the footprint, or making “edge-outs,” is nothing new for the industry. Many operators have occasionally extended their reach within certain territories as populations shifted or new businesses have emerged in less dense areas. But only recently have large and small operators focused on the fringe as a potential growth area, encouraged by improvements in technology and the availability of federal and state funds to extend their networks. 

It appears that 2020 was a breakout year for broadband. Residential broadband subscriptions from all providers, already rising at a healthy pace in 2019, grew by about 4.7% in Q3 2020, or 2 percentage points above the prior year, according to MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett. Overall broadband penetration grew another 2 points during the year to 85%, per Sanford Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino. 

For cable operators, the growth trajectory was even more dramatic. According to Moffett, cable broadband subscriber additions rose 50% to 1.4 million in Q3 2020. Overall, broadband subscriptions increased at a 7.4% pace, nearly 3 points higher than a year before, in Q3 2019, and the fastest growth rate since 2009, according to Moffett. 

Telco broadband providers lost nearly 1% of their customers, that sector’s best showing since 2016.

Practically every cable operator broke broadband subscriber records in 2020. Charter Communications led the pack with an astonishing 850,000 customer additions in Q2, a nearly fourfold increase over the prior year. Lockdowns and work-from-home orders, coupled with school closings across the country, increased the need for ubiquitous broadband availability. Comcast, the largest cable operator in the country, added 633,000 broadband customers in Q3, its best showing ever. Smaller operators like WideOpenWest, Atlantic Broadband and Mediacom Communications also reached milestones.

Atlantic Broadband, which has about 492,000 subscribers in 11 states from Maine to Florida, added 23,475 broadband customers in the first nine months of fiscal 2020, a 25% increase over the prior fiscal year. The company has supplemented its edge-out efforts with federal and state grants, and has also partnered with municipalities to share the cost of extending the network. And the efforts go beyond just pushing service boundaries.  

ALSO READ: Operators Put Their (Foot)print Down

“We are not only pursuing edge-outs and working to connect new subdivisions,” Atlantic Broadband spokesman Andrew Walton said in a statement. “We also are finding creative ways to connect established, previously unserved subdivisions that due to distance from existing plant would not meet traditional build criteria.  By working closely with homeowners’ associations, we have found creative ways to minimize risk, share costs and improve the rate of return on costly projects, including sharing construction costs with HOAs and obtaining service commitments from residents.”

Increasing speeds also helps boost service take rates, Walton continued, adding that more than 90% of ABB’s footprint has access to 1 Gigabit per second service. The rollout of its new managed WiFi offering also is expected to attract customer interest. 

WOW added 27,400 broadband customers in the first nine months of 2020, more than it has in all of the past two years. Mediacom added 97,000 high-speed internet customers, the largest three-quarter increase in its history.

While the early months of the pandemic drove big increases, that pace started to slacken for some operators in Q3: Charter had 537,000 broadband additions in the period. The pace is expected to have slowed further in Q4. According to Supino, Comcast should add about 515,000 broadband customers when it reports Q4 results on Jan. 28, ending the year with nearly 2 million additional customers. Charter should end Q4 with 350,000 broadband additions when it releases results on Jan. 29, adding nearly 2.5 million for the year. Altice USA, which hasn’t yet set a date to deliver Q4 earnings, should add 15,000 high-speed data subscribers in the period, pushing full-year gains to nearly 200,000.

Edge-Outs Have Surged

Charter and Comcast both have stepped up initiatives to expand their networks in the past two years. According to Moffett, footprint expansion had been flat or about 1% annually for the top four publicly traded cable operators prior to 2019. 

Charter and Comcast began to meaningfully increase that pace in 2019, though, to around 2%, adding nearly 1 million homes to their respective footprints during that year. In the first nine months of 2020, Charter added another 868,000 homes and Comcast added 764,000 homes, suggesting it should meet or surpass its previous pace. 

Part of the Charter increase can be attributed to the approval conditions for its purchase of Time Warner Cable in 2016, in which it agreed to build out about 2 million additional underserved homes across the country.   

During its Q3 earnings conference call with analysts, Charter chief financial officer Christopher Winfrey said that the overall effect of the edge-out program has been “meaningful, not material,” but he was nevertheless pleased with connection rates in those expanded areas. 

Charter has seen a “high level of consistency in terms of our ability to get to very high terminal penetrations when we build into markets,” Winfrey said. “And so, that’s what gives us confidence in our ability to go extend that investment concept.”

At the Morgan Stanley Virtual European Technology, Media and Telecom conference in November, Winfrey said that despite quarterly differences, 2020 was shaping up to be a very strong year for broadband.

“What we’ve said is that our quarterly net adds, our quarterly performance, isn’t what matters,” Winfrey said. “What really matters is the totality of the year and where are we going. And if you look at 2020, no matter what happens over the last two months of Q4, we’re going to end 2020 with a much higher amount of customers than any of us ever expected.” 

He said he was optimistic that the company’s edge-out plan will be worth the effort.

“We’re investing in areas where the economics and the payback are challenging to begin with for the first operator to come in,” Winfrey said at the Morgan Stanley conference. “There really isn't any ROI [return on investment] for the second operator to come in which means you can have a lot of confidence in terms of where your penetration ultimately will land, and we’ve seen that already. To be fair, the cash-on-cash payback for these projects is much longer than what we typically do. But the IRR [internal rate of return], because of your ability to have confidence in the penetration curve, is actually very high. We think it’s an attractive investment to make and we think there’s a bunch of other tangible and intangible benefits that we’re not even baking into our analysis.”

Comcast has kept its plans closer to the vest, but has said that driving connections by extending the network via line extensions is one of four pillars of growth.

Smaller operators are also seeing the benefits of edge-outs, and more of them are stepping up their plans. 

At WideOpenWest, edge-outs have been a key part of overall broadband growth, according to CEO Teresa Elder. In WOW’s third-quarter conference call with analysts, Elder said that footprint expansion accounted for about 1,900 of the 10,200 broadband customers the company added in Q3, its best showing in that category since Q3 2018. For the immediate future, the company said it will focus on its existing markets. 

“While it continues to be important, we are now more focused on increasing the penetration rates in current markets rather than spending additional capital to push new ones, especially during the pandemic,” Elder said. The numbers back up that strategy. On the call Elder said that broadband penetration rates in communities that were edged-out in 2018 increased to 19.6% in Q3 from 18.5% in the previous period, while rates in communities that were expanded in 2019 grew to 14.8% from 13.6% in Q2.

Economics Have Improved

Increased penetration metrics is one reason cable operators of all sizes are rethinking the decision to expand their reach. In the past, pushing the network out to less densely populated areas was too costly. But a combination of better technology and stronger rural subscriber characteristics makes extending into less populated areas more feasible.

In a research note, Moffett estimated that it can cost between $1,000 and $2,000 per home to extend fiber into an urban market. For rural markets, where the runs are longer and the homes farther apart, that cost could balloon to $4,000.

But rural markets, with fewer competitors, have a much higher opportunity to sign up passed homes for service. While 40% to 50% penetration rates could be assumed for urban builds, Moffett added, in rural markets 80% penetration rates are not unreasonable. That return on investment makes the higher costs more manageable. An urban market with a 50% penetration rate implies a cost of $4,000 per home, while a rural market with 80% penetration implies a cost that is just 25% higher, Moffett wrote. 

According to Kagan, the media research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, smaller markets are taking broadband at an accelerated pace. Kagan found that although there was a nearly 30 percentage-point gap in wireline broadband take rates between rural and urban markets, homes in less populated areas were increasingly signing on to service when it became available.

According to Kagan, the wireline broadband take rate in areas with 1.1 homes per mile was about 54.3%, compared to 83% in areas with 280 homes per mile.   

“Wireline broadband penetration take rates in rural America are likely impeded by limited service access due to uneconomical cable and telco deployment, inhospitable terrain or a combination of both,” Kagan determined.

But as service is deployed over time, the take rates rise. According to Kagan, broadband networks with as few as 6.8 homes passed per mile saw a 2.4 percentage point increase in the take rates between 2016 and 2019, with the largest jump (4.9 points) being in communities with 48.5 homes per mile. In the densest markets, those with 280 homes per mile, the increase was just 3.4 points. 

“Of note, the most urban group shows only the fourth-largest gains in penetration during the interval under consideration, reminding industry observers that wireline broadband maturity challenges loom,” Kagan said in
the report.

ALSO READ: Ops Brace for Second Wave of Cord-Cutting

National Cable Television Cooperative VP of broadband solutions Jared Baumann said the Kagan data points to the strong demand for reliable high-speed service in rural areas, and also signals how new products take time to take hold in small communities. He pointed to the early days of the pandemic, when many rural residents used their cellphones as hotspots for home internet connections. But as work-from-home orders dragged on, they flipped that stance.

“Now they’ve realized that when they’re home and need service, a cellular or mobile provider is not adequate for that, you really need a landline connection,” Baumann said. “More than ever you need a landline connection.”   

Smaller operators are spending big money on wireless spectrum to extend their reach, which many see as a more economical way than fiber to push broadband out to the hinterlands. 

Mediacom Communications has spent about $30 million for CBRS spectrum in federal auctions, according to senior VP of government and public relations Thomas Larsen. That additional spectrum should lead to more broadband subscribers, as the company plans to target communities that have access to high-speed data speeds of less than 50 Megabits per second, replacing it with a service with speeds of 100 Mbps upstream and 20 Mbps downstream. 

“We’re going to try to roll out a 100/20 service so that in those areas we are a significant upgrade to whatever they have today,” Larsen said. “We think we’ll do OK in those areas. That is fertile ground.” 

Funds to Add Rural Homes

Although smaller operators have used edge-outs for years, the difference today, beyond the fact that there is more and more competition from overbuilders than in the past, is the availability of government funds, like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

“In places that just would never make financial sense to build with private or corporate monies, you can supplement some of that with the funds that are coming from RDOF or other government stimulus programs,” Baumann said. “It’s great for people who live in these areas, because these areas have traditionally been vastly underserved and in some cases, unserved.”    

Mediacom has also taken advantage of state grants for broadband expansion. It received grants for about a dozen communities in Alabama, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota last year and expects to apply for more this year.

“That’s an area where I think with the $3.2 billion that went into the last round of the [federal COVID-19] stimulus, you’re going to see companies jump on board. And that can come from rural or urban areas,” Larsen said.

The RDOF program, which will hand out  $20 billion in Universal Service Fund (USF) subsidies for rural fixed broadband over the next decade, also should help grease the deployment skids. Charter was the biggest winner in the RDOF auctions, snagging $1.2 billion in awards in phase one, winning just over 1 million of the 5.2 million locations available.

At the virtual UBS Global TMT conference in December, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said he couldn’t talk specifically about plans for the RDOF funding, because of a quiet period, but he did comment on the idea of rural expansion.  

“We think it’s good for us financially to extend our broadband network and all of our network capabilities to as many people as possible,” Rutledge said. “And we think working with the federal, local and state authorities to improve access to poles and rights of way, along with the proper subsidies, can get it done, and that we can have a bigger customer base and the communities that we serve can be expanded. 

“We think it’s smart for our company to do that,” he continued. “We think it can be done in an economically efficient way and by working with regulatory authorities, state and federal authorities, that we can expand our network and have a bigger footprint. We’ve embraced that and we’re participating in various programs around the country to expand the amount of serviceable footprint that we can reach. And we think if we do that, we’ll end up with more customers, and a happier customer and a better relationship with the total community."

Mediacom, which won about $2.5 million in phase one of the RDOF reverse auction, agreed, adding that extending the footprint not only potentially brings unserved or underserved homes into the fold, it can create new businesses.  

“Piece by piece, we’re going to inch our fiber out deeper, pick up more homes and when you combine it with the CBRS spectrum, hopefully we close massive gaps in the coverage area,” Larsen said, adding that the opportunities are huge even in states where Mediacom has a strong presence.

As an example, he pointed to Iowa, where Mediacom has large clusters in larger areas like Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Iowa City. Outside of those markets are vast swaths of territory that are underserved.

“If you look at an Iowa broadband map, a lot of the geographic areas of the state look like they’re unserved because there is a lot of farmland,” Larsen said. “Every mile, you may have four houses or six houses. Those don’t have a wireline broadband provider today, so if we can get them a 100-Mbps wireless service quickly, that’s a new house passed.   

“Ultimately, we would love to figure out a solution, using that same wireless service, to be a provider to the farm itself as a business operation,” Larsen continued. “So, if they have water sensors or they have tractors or combines or whatever that are moving around the farm and we can connect wirelessly to them from the towers, that would be another business opportunity.”  

Earlier this week, the eighth largest cable company in the U.S., Atlantic Broadband, announced that it has become the latest MSO to launch a managed WiFi service based on a cloud-based technology developed by Plume, OpenSync. 

Atlantic Broadband, which reported 492,212 broadband customers as of the end of September, is now offering these subscribers the managed WiFi service “WiFi Your Way.” Powered by Plume’s "HomePass" technology, the new service includes AI-driven optimization features, which adapt router settings to customer usage patterns to deliver better speed and performance over time. There are control and personalization features that let parents shut down and enable their kids’ devices from their iOS and Android smart phones. 

There are also online security features, as well as home security enablements, such as motion detection. 

The Atlantic Broadband announcement comes about 14 months after the No. 2 U.S. cable operator, Charter Communications, announced that it would deploy managed WiFi services based on Plume’s core technology, the open-sourced, cloud-based software OpenSync. 

But Charter still hasn’t deployed the managed WiFi service, which it calls “Advanced In-Home WiFi,” to key market such as Los Angeles. 

Also Read: Charter Promises 200 Mbps Base Speeds in 17 More Markets

Earlier this week, Charter published a self-produced Q&A with its top technology executive, Stephanie Mitchko-Beale, who said the cable operator is “in the process of launching” Advanced In-Home WiFi “throughout our footprint.”

The service, she said, will enable Charter’s more than 28.6 million home internet customers “control over their security and privacy by letting them see every device that’s connected to their network and how it’s being used.

“Throughout the year we plan to make Advanced WiFi available in more markets, and we continue to expand the availability to our own Spectrum-branded WiFi Pods to enable customers to maximize network connectivity throughout their home,” Mitchko-Beale added. 

When asked which Charter markets have seen Advanced In-Home WiFi deployments, a Charter rep referred Multichannel News to the Mitchko-Beale statement. 

Notably, top U.S. cable operator Comcast, an early inventor in Plume, has been offering managed WiFi services based on OpenSync to 30 million-plus broadband customers for several years. 

For now, the limited penetration of managed WiFi doesn’t appear to be curtailing Charter’s overall proliferation of broadband services, with the cable operator adding 537,000 high-speed internet customers in the third quarter. 

Altice USA officially threw in the towel in its months-long pursuit of Cogeco Communications, saying Wednesday that it will not pursue its bid for the Canadian telecom company.

Altice USA joined with Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications on Sept. 2 to launch a $7.8 billion bid for Cogeco.  As part of the deal, Altice would pay about $3.6 billion for Cogeco’s U.S. cable assets (Atlantic Broadband) while Rogers would pay $4.2 billion for Cogeco’s Canadian telecom businesses. That offer was rejected by Cogeco’s controlling shareholder -- Gestion Audem -- but Altice sweetened its bid on Oct. 19, increasing its price for Atlantic Broadband to $3.9 billion. While that bid was also rejected, Altice said it would give the company until Nov. 18 to officially answer. 

Related: Altice and Cogeco: He’s Just Not That Into You 

Altice USA had held out little hope of a deal materializing after the second rejection, but kept its fingers crossed. But with no deal in sight, on Nov. 18, Altice USA officially called off its pursuit. 

“Our offer to acquire Cogeco in order to own Atlantic Broadband has expired and we do not intend to extend it,” Altice USA said in a statement. “We remain committed to our growth strategy and continue to focus on opportunities to drive value for our shareholders.”

That includes continuing to look at both organic and M&A opportunities to grow the footprint. 

Earlier on Wednesday, Rogers CEO Joe Natale said at an industry conference that he was disappointed that he never got to negotiate with Gestion Audem’s ruling Audet family. He added that he still believes the deal would have been good for both companies.

“We’re disappointed that we didn’t get the ability to engage with either the Audet family or the Cogeco boards on what is a terrific offer, a highly valued offer,” Rogers CEO Joe Natale said at the RBC Capital Markets Global Technology, Internet, Media and Telecommunications Virtual Conference. “But it just wasn’t meant to be, there wasn’t the appetite to follow through or pursue it on their part.” 

With its $3.9 billion pursuit of Atlantic Broadband nearly just a memory, Altice USA is turning its focus to smaller acquisitions, telling analysts it has a “handful” of potential targets in mind as it looks to boost growth. 

Altice USA launched a $3.6 billion offer for Atlantic Broadband — part of a larger $7.8 billion joint bid with Rogers Communications for its parent, Canadian telecom operator Cogeco — on Sept. 2. After Cogeco’s controlling shareholder rejected that deal, Altice and Rogers increased their offer to $8.4 billion ($3.9 billion for ABB) on Oct.18, which was again summarily rejected.

On its Oct. 29 conference call with analysts to discuss third-quarter results, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei noted that there is still time for Cogeco to change its mind — it had imposed a Nov. 18 deadline for Cogeco to accept the deal — but he held out little hope. 

“We’re very cognizant that the controlling shareholder needs to be acquiesced,” Goei said on the conference call. “Based on his rhetoric and his statements to date, I think it’s fair to say that there is a low chance of us collectively with Rogers being able to move forward on this project. Formally, we’ve got until Nov. 18, so we’ll see if anything shakes loose.” 

The apparent failure of the Cogeco bid doesn’t mean Altice USA is giving up on M&A. On the conference call, Goei pointed to a handful of potential targets, adding that interest is growing among small operators to sell out. 

“We are out there looking at a handful of things,” Goei said, adding that given Altice USA’s 21-state footprint, there are several opportunities to find small systems contiguous to its operating area.

Small-Market Opportunities 

While the choices may be few and far between in Altice’s Optimum footprint — the former Cablevision Systems operations in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — the opportunities appear greater in its Suddenlink division. Suddenlink, which Altice purchased in 2015 for $9.1 billion, operates in 14 states and has been a “sneaky” source of organic growth for the company, according to Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino. 

In a research report, Supino estimated Altice would add about 90,000 broadband customers in 2021, 85,000 in 2022 and 70,000 in both 2023 and 2024, with the bulk of those gains (66,000; 67,000; 69,000 and 71,000) coming from Suddenlink. 

“Why would a decades-old business in smaller midwestern and southeastern cities offer a growth opportunity?” Supino asked in his report. “Amidst steadily rising demand for bandwidth — a powerful trend long before COVID-19 — and with relentless cable upgrades overwhelming DSL [digital subscriber line] competition, small-town cable has become a quasi-monopoly on Internet service.” 

Altice USA already showed its appetite for smaller systems when it purchased Service Electric Cable TV of New Jersey in July for $150 million. In its Q3 conference call, Goei said Service Electric has proven to be a strong purchase, adding that Altice has been able to grow the unit with minimal eff ort. Service Electric has about 30,000 subscribers. 

“It’s not necessarily that easy to unlock all of this, but given the environment, given the interest rate environment, given that size does really matter here in terms of getting operational synergies and investing heavily in technology and customer service, it is starting to percolate that some of the smaller operators, the mom-and-pop guys, are looking to deal,” Goei said. 

He pointed to Service Electric, which needed some investment in its network and didn’t have a consistent marketing strategy when Altice first bought it, but has responded well with minimal effort. 

“We’re seeing a lot of low-hanging fruit just by adding two or three additional salespeople both on the SMB [small and medium-sized businesses] side and the B2B side, that’s been very lucrative for us just increasing penetration out there, bringing new products, and we’re upgrading the network as quickly as we can,” Goei said. “Everything that we are able to get our hands on in terms of M&A opportunities will be the best use of our capital.” 

Altice also has the financial wherewithal to do a deal. In addition to generating a ton of free cash flow — $458 million in Q3, 48% above consensus and three times the prior year figure — the cable operator is expected to receive about $1.1 billion in cash from the sale of a 49% interest in its LightPath business telecom unit to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners. That deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. 

Little Guys Seek Deals 

According to sources in the cable M&A community, smaller operators are indeed looking to do deals. In addition, TPG, the Dallas-based private equity firm that owns RCN, Grande Communications, EnTouch Communications and Wave Broadband, agreed to sell its systems with more than one million customers to private equity group Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners and Patriot Media in a deal valued at about $8.1 billion, including the assumption of debt. 

TPG, which put the assets on the block in September, purchased the systems in three separate deals, agreeing to pay $2.25 billion for RCN and Grande in 2016, and completing its $2.36 billion purchase of Wave in 2018. It purchased Entouch in September, adding 22,000 customers. 

While most of the attention is heaped on large, publicly traded cable operators, the industry is still peppered with small, family-owned operations that dot the country. According to Kagan, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, there are more than 700 cable operators across the country with less than 100,000 subscribers, with a number of those companies located in states where Suddenlink operates, like Kansas (29), Kentucky (28) and Texas (23). 

One small operator that asked not to be named added that the number of companies willing to do deals isn’t necessarily increasing, it’s just that as other growth opportunities fade, they are becoming better noticed. 

“To some extent, I think those deals in the smaller operator space have always existed,” the operator said. “I don’t think we have seen any particular uptick.” 

According to analysts, while Altice USA’s growth strategy includes edging out its current footprint and driving penetration rates in its existing territory, it is a bit hamstrung by its popularity in its bigger markets. Penetration rates in its Optimum service footprint — basically metropolitan New York — are more than 50%. While opportunities are greater in its more rural Suddenlink markets, with penetration rates of 30% to 40%, buying systems still appears to be the fastest way for Altice to achieve its goals. 

In a research note, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett acknowledged Altice’s M&A desires, adding that a combined strategy of organic growth and M&A deals are what will most likely drive the stock in the future.

Growth Strategy 

“Altice clearly wants to grow, not only through acquisition, but also by edging out into unserved adjacent rural markets,” Moffett wrote. “And that’s precisely what the market wants.” 

Barclays Research media analyst Kannan Venkateshwar agreed, adding that while Altice does have some strong growth drivers, its high penetration rates and industry-high ARPU (average revenue per user) limit visibility in the long term. 

“Consequently, we do believe [Altice USA] is likely to more actively seek smaller cable deals over the course of the next year, to extract growth from synergies instead,” he wrote. 

After an impressive 66% run in 2019, Altice USA shares have slid about 3% this year. A lot of the pressure on the stock is due to investor concerns that its nearly fully penetrated in the competitive New York market. 

“Anything that Altice can do to geographically diversify away from their legacy Optimum footprint would be welcomed by the market, even if they have to pay a premium to do it,” Moffett wrote.

Altice had strong Q3 results — broadband growth at 26,000 subscribers was above consensus expectations — in line with other larger operators. Altice USA also managed to convert a large chunk of broadband subscribers that were receiving service as part of the Keep America Connected pledge, where most providers agreed not to disconnect broadband service during the pandemic. Altice said that during the second quarter about 10,000 customers under the KAC pledge were past due on payments for more than 90 days. Now that number of delinquent accounts is under 3,000, the company said. 

Broadband Boom 

Altice USA’s broadband growth comes as larger companies continue to rack up high-speed internet subscribers. The country’s largest cable operator, Comcast, added 633,000 broadband customers in Q3, its best quarter for broadband growth ever. No. 2 Charter Communications added 537,000 broadband customers in Q3, and has gained more than 1.4 million broadband customers in the past 12 months. 

On a conference call with analysts, Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts marveled at the continued momentum for the broadband product, which most cable operators began offering in earnest at the turn of the 21st century. 

“To have the best broadband quarter in the company’s history sitting here in 2020, when it’s a 20-year-old product, give or take, is a pretty dramatic and amazing statement in my opinion,” Roberts said on the call. 

Broadband growth has been robust to say the least during the pandemic. According to Moffett, high-speed internet growth rates at Charter have been between 6.1% and 8.8% for the past three quarters, while Comcast has ranged between 5.5% and 6.7% growth. Altice, which has a much smaller and more highly penetrated customer base, grew between 2% and 3.7% over the past three quarters. 

While Altice, like its larger peers, is building out its footprint to include homes previously not receiving service, that won’t likely be enough on its own to move the growth needle. Altice said it is extending its network to about 150,000 new homes per year. Charter is building out between 500,00 and 600,000 homes and Comcast is doing about the same. In a conference call with analysts Oct. 30, Charter chief financial officer Christopher Winfrey said while the effect of the build outs has had a “meaningful” impact on broadband subscriber growth, it hasn’t been “material.” 

“It’s helpful, but it’s not the material driver for our growth,” Winfrey said. That would mean for companies like Altice, acquisition — any acquisitions — may be the only way to turn the corner on growth fast enough to satisfy Wall Street. 

“To be sure, waking up to news that Altice has bought a small operator many people won’t have ever heard of before isn’t as sexy as waking up to news that they’ve been bought by Charter would be,” Moffett wrote. “But it is infinitely more likely, and Altice shares are cheap enough that buying a small operator or two might be all that is needed to finally close the valuation gap.”

Altice USA, more than one month after its unsolicited bid for Cogeco Communications was soundly rejected by the Canadian telco’s controlling shareholder, has increased its bid by 8%, including upping its offer for Cogeco’s US operations, Atlantic Broadband.

In a statement, the Audet family, which controls about 69% of Cogeco's vote, again rejected the deal. 

Altice USA said on Sunday that along with Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications, it was raising its offer for 100% of Cogeco to C$11.1 billion ($8.4 billion) in cash. Altice USA said if the offer was accepted, it would pay about C$5.1 billion ($3.9 billion) for the Atlantic Broadband assets and sell Cogeco’s Canadian businesses to Rogers for the remainder. 

Altice and Rogers offered a combined $7.8 billion for Cogeco on Sept. 2. Of that amount, Altice said it would pay about $3.6 billion for Atlantic Broadband.

Cogeco’s ruling Audet family rejected Altice and Rogers’ earlier bid in September, adding that the family had no intention to sell its stake. 

At the time Louis Audet, Cogeco executive chairman and leader of the Audet Family Trust, Gestion Audem, said in a statement that the family’s rejection of the bid “not a negotiating tactic.”

In a statement issued late Sunday, the family held fast to that stance.

"As we did on September 2nd, 2020, following the announcement of their first unsolicited proposal, members of the Audet family unanimously reject this further proposal. Since this is apparently not registering with Rogers and Altice, we repeat today that this is not a negotiating strategy, but a definitive refusal. We are not interested in selling our shares," said Louis Audet in the statement.

He added that the Audet family's stewardship of the company over 63 years has allowed Cogeco to grow into the only broadband provider with significant operations in the U.S. and Canada, and its stock price and operating results have outperformed  both Altice USA and Rogers.

"Rogers has freely chosen to accumulate shares in the Corporations with full knowledge of the implications," Louis Audet continued. "The Audet family regrets that Rogers' capital allocation decision is causing the Rogers family and Board such anguish."

A good chunk of the bid increase is targeted at the Audet family, led by Cogeco chairman Louis Audet. Altice said that about C$900 million ($682 million) of the purchase price would go to the family for their shares, up from the C$800 million ($612 million) they would have received in the earlier offer.

“We are pleased to present an incredibly attractive revised and enhanced offer for Cogeco that significantly rewards all shareholders and incorporates feedback from recent discussions with holders of subordinate voting shares,” Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said in a press release. “We encourage the Cogeco boards to act in the best interest of all shareholders and stakeholders as they thoughtfully consider this offer, and we respectfully request that the boards engage with us to discuss our proposal.”

Most analysts expected Altice to increase its bid. 

Altice said in a press release that it was giving Cogeco until Nov. 18 to accept the offer, after such time it would withdraw the bid.

After a tersely worded rejection by the head of the family trust that controls most of the voting rights of Canadian telecom company Cogeco Inc., Altice USA may have to focus its efforts on the remaining family members if it wants its unsolicited takeover attempt to move forward.

Altice USA joined hands with Canadian communications giant Rogers Communications to launch an aggressive $7.8 billion takeover of Cogeco, the fourth-largest telecom company in Canada, on Sept. 2. Altice USA, based in New York, is only interested in Atlantic Broadband — Cogeco’s U.S. cable operations — which it offered to buy for $3.6 billion, or about 10.2 times forward-looking cash flow. Rogers, which owns a 41% interest in Cogeco, has offered $4.2 billion for the company’s Canadian operations. 

It didn’t take long for Cogeco to reject that offer. In a statement, Louis Audet — Cogeco’s executive chairman and head of Gestion Audem, the holding company for his family’s stake in the telco — did so flatly.

 “Our stocks are not for sale,” Audet said. “And let me be clear, our refusal is not a negotiating position, it is final.”

That didn’t appear to faze Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei who, at the virtual Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment conference Sept. 9, said Altice was still working on getting a deal done.  

Altice’s Long Game

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Goei said at the conference. “We’re committed to trying to come to an end game. From our standpoint, that’s very simple, which is we’d like to be able to acquire the U.S. assets.”

Altice burst on the scene in 2015 with its $9.1 billion purchase of Suddenlink Communications and followed that with the $17.7 billion buy of Cablevision Systems a year later. An IPO in 2017 raised about $1.9 billion and created a deal currency many expected would be used to roll up smaller operators. But since the Cablevision deal, Altice USA has managed just one purchase — Service Electric Cable TV of New Jersey for $150 million —  an all-cash deal that closed in July. In the meantime, under some pressure from analysts to maintain its growth trajectory,  the company has made M&A a priority.  “We will always be looking at stuff out there,” Goei said at the Bank of America conference.

In detailing the offer on Sept. 2, Altice USA said that because of Cogeco’s corporate structure — Gestion Audem owns 69% voting control of Cogeco and 71% of Cogeco Connections’ voting rights — a deal would have to receive the Audet family’s blessing. Unlike other unsolicited deals, trying to circumvent the family by soliciting the favor of other shareholders would serve no purpose. 

So if Altice and Rogers are serious, they’ll have to appeal to individual family members, a notion not lost on Evercore ISI media analyst James Ratcliffe.  In a Sept. 2 note, he pointed out that the tone of the press release announcing the offer seemed to indicate it had yet to convince Louis Audet of the benefits of a deal. 

“The release appears designed to appeal to other members of the Audet family, and also to an argument on the fiduciary duty of independent members of the Cogeco board,” he wrote.

In a Sept. 2 press release, Altice highlighted the $612 million in cash as part of the offer that would go to Gestion Audem.  

The situation is reminiscent of an earlier unsolicited takeover of a family-controlled media asset: News Corp.’s $5.6 billion purchase of Dow Jones & Co. in 2007.

Back then, the Murdoch family-led News Corp.’s unsolicited $5 billion bid — a 67% premium to its share price — blindsided Dow Jones’s ruling Bancroft family. As with Cogeco, initially the Bancrofts rejected the offer, concerned about News Corp.’s tabloid reputation. But three months later, after targeting younger, more eager-to-sell members of the Bancroft clan, Murdoch had a deal.

Whether that can be the path toward a Cogeco deal remains to be seen. The Bancroft trust included dozens of family members with diverse interests regarding their stakes. According to the Cogeco website, Gestion Audem is more closely held, with Louis Audet, the only family member among Cogeco senior management, holding the biggest piece (29.16%). He is followed by his brothers Bernard (17.7%) and Francois (13.89%) and two trusts: Fiducie la Fuente (17.71%) and Fiducie des Aulnes (21.53%).

Ultimately, a sale would depend on Altice and Rogers’ ability to increase the offer and the Audet family’s willingness to accept it. While Rogers has long coveted Cogeco’s Canadian assets, Altice USA’s ability to up the ante could be trickier.

Price May Be Too Steep

“If they can get it for anything like their offer price, it would be a great addition,” MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said in an email.  “It would help them diversify away from the low-growth New York-area Optimum business, and would give them a longer runway for broadband growth and consolidated margin expansion.”

Sanford Bernstein media analyst Peter Supino said given the potential of the Atlantic Broadband systems, Altice USA should have no problems going higher if it wants to.“I think that the company should be willing to pay higher prices and really pay right up to its point of economic indifference for the asset,” he said.

Hours after Altice USA launched a $7.8 billion unsolicited takeover offer for the Canadian communications company, Cogeco said it has received the bid and its board of directors will review it, but that its controlling shareholders don’t want to sell. 

Altice USA said earlier today that it had offered $7.8 billion for Cogeco in a deal that would give it control of the Canadian company’s Atlantic Broadband U.S. cable assets. In addition, Altice USA said it had an agreement to sell Cogeco’s Canadian operations to one of its largest outside shareholders, Rogers Communications.

In a statement  Wednesday, Cogeco said it received Altice USA’s unsolicited offer after the close of business on Sept. 1 and it will be submitted to and reviewed by its board of directors today (Sept. 2). But the company added that Gestion Audem, the group that holds the Audet family’s controlling interest in Cogeco, has already indicated its intentions.

“Gestion Audem Inc. has already indicated that it does not intend to sell its shares and will not support the proposal,” Cogeco said in the statement. “The Corporations will not comment any further at this time.”

In a statement, Altice USA replied that it believes its "offer is very attractive and in the best interest of all shareholders, and we look forward to hearing from the Board."

Altice didn't say whether it will increase its offer for the company. Either way, Cogeco appears to be in play. 

The deal appears to be a rich valuation for the company. According to Altice USA, its C$106.53 offer for Cogeco represents a 36% premium to its closing price on Aug. 31. Since the deal was announced, Cogeco stock has soared on the Toronto Stock Exchange to C$114.5, up 15%. Altice stock was up 3.4% to $28.61 each in early afternoon trading. 

As far as the U.S. cable assets, Altice USA’s $3.6 billion valuation represents about 10.2 times Atlantic’s 2020 estimated EBITDA, according to Evercore ISI analyst James Ratcliffe. In a note to clients, Ratcliffe said he suspected Cogeco Communications chairman Louis Audet at least was reluctant to sign off immediately on the deal. 

“The tone and phrasing of the release indicates to us that the offer does not (at least not yet) have the support of Louis Audet,” Ratcliffe wrote. “The release appears designed to appeal to other members of the Audet family, and also to an argument on the fiduciary duty of independent members of the Cogeco board.”

Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar estimated that 70% to 80% of Atlantic Broadband’s footprint overlaps with DSL service and its broadband penetration at around 40% is relatively low, which could mean a big growth opportunity. He noted that the bulk of ABB’s footprint is already upgraded to provide speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second. 

“Overall, while there is still uncertainty as to whether the deal will happen, it does provide some insight into [Altice USA's] continued focus on driving growth through smaller acquisitions,” Venkateshwar wrote, pointing to its July purchase of Service Electric Cable TV of New Jersey. 

"However, we do believe this path is likely to get tougher given its already high leverage, valuation levels in cable and family/private equity ownership of many of the remaining private cable assets," he  continued. "We continue to believe that [Altice USA] might be part of some other cable combinations in the future as has been speculated in the past, although the bid/ask likely remains quite wide.” 

Altice USA’s $7.8 billion bid for Canadian operator Cogeco has cast the spotlight on its U.S. cable gem, Atlantic Broadband

Atlantic Broadband burst on the scene in 2003 after its purchase of 230,000 subscribers in Florida and western Pennsylvania from Charter Communications (it closed the deal in 2004). That $735 million buy, backed by ABRY Partners, Oak Hill Capital and Merrill Lynch & Co., thrust its two top executives, former Continental Cable president Ed Holleran and former CEO David Keefe immediately into the top 15 cable operators in the country. 

The next eight years were characterized by smaller acquisitions, building out its network and organic growth. By June 2012, ABB was looking for a buyer and about a month later it found one -- Canadian cable and telecom company Cogeco. Cogeco agreed to buy ABB for $1.4 billion, and saw the U.S. operator as a vehicle to consolidate the American cable business.    

Atlantic Broadband did not disappoint, engineering a series of smaller deals -- like Harron Communications’ MetroCast Connecticut systems for $200 million --   and culminating in its 2018 purchase of the rest of Harron’s Metrocast properties for $1.4 billion. 

The MetroCast purchase was the largest for ABB since the Cogeco purchase and represented an integration challenge for the company, which it pulled off without a hitch. 

In the past few years ABB has focused on smaller purchases, including a small regional fiber company -- FiberLight -- in Florida in 2018,  a system in Springfield, West Virginia from Comcast in 2019,  and in January, Southeastern Connecticut broadband services company Thames Valley Communications for about $50 million.

Cogeco said Wednesday afternoon that it had received the Altice USA offer and that it would review it, but that its controlling Audet family has said it does not want to sell.  Analysts that follow Altice have noted that rejection was probably expected. Evercore ISI media analyst James Ratcliffe wrote that the holdout could be Cogeco chairman Louis Audet and that the bid was likely made public to sway other family members.  

Whether Altice USA raises its bid -- Cogeco stock already was up 15% to C$114.17 on Wednesday afternoon, well above the offer price of C$106.53 per share -- or another suitor enters the fray, ABB appears to be in play. 

That could be good news for Atlantic Broadband and the rest of the industry. Unlike other potential distribution assets that could find their way to the auction block -- AT&T is reportedly considering selling off a majority stake in satellite TV giant DirecTV -- ABB is considered to be well-run -- it has about 480,000 broadband customers and passes 1.1 million homes -- and could present some upside for a buyer. According to Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar, 70% to 80% of ABB's footprint competes with slower speed digital subscriber line service and its broadband penetration is low at around 40%. Altice USA, with 49% broadband penetration, has been aggressive in building out fiber and boosting internet speeds, but so would any other buyer.  

“This potentially provides an opportunity to enhance the growth trajectory for ABB,” Venkateshwar wrote. 

Atlantic Broadband said it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Thames Valley Communications, a Southeastern Connecticut broadband services company, for about $50 million.

The deal, expected to close in about three months, would add about 10,000 broadband customers in Groton, Mystic, Stonington, Pawcatuck and Gales Ferry. Atlantic Broadband already has a strong presence in Connecticut, after its 2015 purchase of MetroCast’s operations in that state. 

“The acquisition of Thames Valley Communications will nicely complement our presence in Southeastern Connecticut, as our businesses share the same values of customer focus and support of the communities we serve,” said Atlantic Broadband president Frank van der Post, in a press release.

Morgan Lewis LLP served as Atlantic Broadband’s legal counsel in the transaction. RBC Capital Markets served as M&A adviser for Thames Valley and Lowenstein Sandler LLP served as its legal counsel.

Atlantic Broadband is a subsidiary of Canadian telecom company Cogeco Communications. In a separate press release, Cogeo CEO Philippe Jetté said the deal is characteristic of ABB’s plans to boost its U.S. presence.

“Cogeco Communications is pursuing its growth strategy in the United States,” Jetté said in the press release. “We always look to expand our presence in the U.S. broadband market and the acquisition of Thames Valley Communications represents another step forward in our growth plan.”

Cojeco Communications has named Frank van der Post the new president of its Atlantic Broadband subsidiary.

Van der Post replaces Richard Shea, the Cogeco’s former top U.S. cable executive, who left in April for what were described as personal reasons.

Van der Post, arrives from Dutch telecom KPN, where he last served as chief commercial officer, and was on the board from 2015-2018. He’ll report to Philippe Jetté, president and CEO of Canada’s Cogeco Communications, and will start his new post on Nov. 4.

“Frank’s proven leadership skills combined with his strong strategic marketing knowledge and a track record of successfully delivering results, particularly in industries that are highly customer-focused, make him an ideal candidate to take the leadership role at Atlantic Broadband,” Jetté said, in a statement.

Prior to joining KPN, van der Post worked for British Airways and InterContinental Hotels Group. 

Atlantic Broadband CEO Richard Shea has resigned from the mid-sized cable operator to pursue other interests, ABB parent Cogeco Communications said Thursday. Atlantic Broadband chief financial officer Patrick Bratton will serve as interim CEO of the company while a search for a permanent CEO begins.

Atlantic Broadband is the ninth largest cable operator in the U.S., with about 307,000 video service subscribers in 11 states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. Headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts, the company was purchased by Canadian telecom giant Cogeco Communications in 2012 for $1.36 billion.

Shea joined Atlantic Broadband in 2003 and has held several positions, including chief information officer and chief operating officer, before being named CEO in 2015. 

Shea is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served as an officer in the army overseas and in the United States before achieving the rank of Captain. 

Related: A Small Op That Pulled Off a Big Task

He steered the company through several acquisitions, including the $1.4 billion purchase of MetroCast in March 2018 that added 120,000 broadband and 76,000 video customers to the cable operator. 

Cogeco said Shea will remain with the company for a short period of time to ensure a smooth transition.

“On behalf of my colleagues and the entire Cogeco Communications team, I’d like to thank Rich for his contribution to Atlantic Broadband and to our company and wish him every success in his future endeavours,” Cogeco Communications CEO Philippe Jetté said in a press release.

Atlantic Broadband has announced the deployment of its managed Wi-Fi product in service areas it acquired in its purchase of the remaining MetroCast assets last year.

Enhanced WiFi (E-WiFi) wsa first launched by Atlantic Broadband in its existing markets in 2017. It is now available to the operator’s customers in New Hampshire, Maine, Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern Maryland and Virginia.

E-WiFi uses multiple wireless mesh access points and intelligent routing algorithms designed by AirTies.

“The quality of the in-home WiFi experience and business-based WiFi performance is critical to daily life and commerce today,” said Heather McCallion, VP of products and programming for Atlantic Broadband, in a statement. “After Atlantic Broadband acquired the MetroCast properties last year, we significantly boosted internet speeds for all of our residential and business customers. With today’s launch of E-WiFi, our customers will have access to powerful technology that will take internet performance to new heights.”

In a report published earlier this week, equity research firm Cowen identified managed Wi-Fi, along with smart home management, as opportunities often overlooked in a cable industry focused on broadband speed increases.

“We are seeing the emergence of ‘managed Wi-Fi’ for better in-home coverage solutions which includes RF optimization/education, Wi-Fi extenders, parental controls, and a platform for said device management,” Cohen said. “While Comcast offers ‘xFi Pods’ (Wi-Fi extenders licensed from Plume), we could see a race for more personalized services. Charter recently noted it may launch a smart home management service this fall. Both ‘smart/managed Wi-Fi’ providers such as Plume and the MSO’s (which may or may not white label solutions from managed Wi-Fi providers) are certainly seeing the demand for in-home managed WiFi, and with customers are willing to pay for it.”

Atlantic Broadband said it has added Amazon Alexa voice control functionality to its customers through the Tivo video platform.

According to the cable operator, the enhancement allows its TiVo customers with an Amazon Alexa voice assistant device to issue hands-free voice commands from anywhere in a room without the need for a remote control. This functionality allows customers to easily pause, rewind and fast-forward programming.

“This new Amazon Alexa integration with our TiVo-powered video platform combines ease of use with powerful functionality to dramatically elevate the in-home TV entertainment experience for our customers,” said Atlantic Broadband vice president of products and programming Heather McCallion in a press release. “Today we’re able to deliver even greater value to our customers through innovative virtual assistant technology.”

Atlantic Broadband launched TiVo’s advanced gateway platform in 2013 and the following year was one of the first video providers in the nation to fully integrate Netflix into its video platform. Last summer, Atlantic Broadband introduced a new user interface for the TiVo platform featuring intuitive navigation and enhanced functionality, hyper-personalized viewing recommendations and an easy-to-use remote with voice control.

Atlantic Broadband said it completed the purchase of a system in Springfield, W. Va., from Comcast on Feb. 15. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

In a press release, Atlantic Broadband said it would work to both upgrade and integrate the former Comcast system into its existing infrastructure in Hampshire County, W. Va., in the coming months.

“We have had a long commitment to bringing advanced telecommunications services, including broadband internet, to historically underserved areas,” Atlantic Broadband SVP and general manager Curt Kosko said in a press release. “Until now, residents and businesses here have been restricted to a limited package of video channels, with no broadband internet or phone. As a result of this acquisition, the Springfield community will soon enjoy the very best video, internet and phone services available, all delivered over an advanced, fiber-rich network.”

Related: Greener Pastures

Atlantic Broadband will be reaching out to homes and businesses in the community in the weeks ahead to share information about the company’s plans to upgrade the services, as well as the options available for residential and business customers. 

Atlantic Broadband said it is offering flexible payment options to customers affected by the partial government shutdown that began Dec. 22.

Related: A Small Op That Pulled Off A Big Task

According to ABB, customers who are also affected government employees can receive payment extensions and the adjustment of late fees to stay connected.

Related: Atlantic Broadband CEO Shea Rings Nasdaq Bell For Veterans 

Due to the shutdown, now the longest in U.S history, more than 800,000 employees in nine federal departments and other agencies are working without pay or have been furloughed without pay.

“We realize that it may be a difficult time financially for affected government employees,” said Atlantic vice president of customer care Courtney Long in a statement. “Our customer care teams will work with these customers to find a payment solution that works, as we always strive to do when our customers are in critical need.”

Comcast has applied for a cable franchise in Laconia, N.H., where it would compete against incumbent Atlantic Broadband to offer businesses and consumers video, voice and data service.

This is the second time in less than a year that Comcast has applied for a cable franchise in New Hampshire that was already served by an incumbent cable company. The first time was in Rochester, N.H., also served by Atlantic Broadband. Comcast serves about 104 separate communities in the state.

The Rochester franchise was awarded last December, and according to the Laconia Daily Sun, Comcast expects to complete building out its network in that town sometime next year.

In a statement,  Atlantic Broadband regional general manager for New Hampshire and Maine Edward Merrill said that the cable operator is no stranger to competition.

"Atlantic Broadband has always operated in the presence of competition—in New Hampshire and across our service areas," Merrill said in the statement. "Our plans are based not on what other providers are doing, but by anticipating customer needs and preferences, then developing and delivering the kinds of products and services that will make customer lives better, whether they’re residential customers or business clients with customers of their own.

"In fact, our product roadmap—delivering superfast internet, advanced video and phone, backed with responsive local customer care and technical support—was established long before Atlantic Broadband acquired the MetroCast operations in New Hampshire and Maine earlier this year. Atlantic Broadband was, for example, one of the first providers in the nation to launch TiVo in 2013, and, a year later, one of the first to integrate Netflix into its video platform.

"While we have been operating in the New Hampshire market only since January, we have been greatly encouraged by the response of our customers to the product enhancements we have introduced in this market so far, including faster speeds for residential and business customers, the availability of 1 Gig internet and the new TiVo platform," he  continued. "We are confident that our product suite, as well as our long history of innovation and operational excellence, position us well for long-term success in this market." 

Comcast has made a recent practice of overbuilding incumbents in small markets adjacent to its existing systems. Earlier this year it did the same in New London, Conn. (overbuilding Atlantic Broadband again) and in five communities in Lancaster County, Pa., (overbuilding Blue Ridge Communications). 

Comcast has said that on occasion it will expand its network into communities near existing operations where it sees demand and opportunity.

Related: Greener Pastures

According to the Daily Sun, Comcast plans to offer homes and businesses in the area a full range of services, including high-speed Internet, phone, mobile, wireless, home automation and home security.

Comcast SVP of the Northeast Region Beth Baca confirmed that the cable operator has applied for a franchise in Laconia and is exploring the opportunity to provide service in the area.

Comcast Greater Boston regional spokesman Marc Goodman told the paper that Laconia represented an “attractive opportunity.”

“We’re doing this because we know there’s demand for our products and services,” Goodman told the paper. “Laconia offers an attractive opportunity to respond to demand.”

Atlantic Broadband CEO Richard Shea joined executives from more than 50 companies to help honor U.S. veterans at the Nasdaq Marketsite in New York, by ringing the opening bell in a special ceremony at the stock exchange Monday.

The ceremony was part of an annual Veterans Day event sponsored by the Thayer Leader Development Group at West Point (TLDG). Now in its sixth year, the event recognizes public and private companies that have made an impact supporting active duty military members, veterans, and their families.

Related: A Small Op That Pulled Off A Big Task 

The event also featured roundtable discussion about how today’s executives can develop the next generation of America's business leaders through veterans support.

Shea, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served as an officer in the army overseas and in the United States before achieving the rank of Captain.

“It is good to pause each year to reflect on the contribution made by our military personnel in their service to our country, as well as the substantial sacrifices our veterans and families have made in carrying out that service,” Shea said in a statement. “Still, our support for veterans cannot merely be one of thanks and appreciation, but finding concrete ways to support veterans in our business communities, including bringing their talents to our workplaces.”

Just weeks after scrapping its merger with Sinclair Broadcast Group, Tribune Media said it landed carriage deals with three Multichannel Video Programming Distributors – Verizon Communications’ Fios TV, Atlantic Broadband and Google Fiber.

Related: Atlantic Broadband Completes Fiber Network Purchase

Tribune did not disclose the terms of the deals, but said collectively they encompass about 3.6 million customers in markets primarily located in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country.

Tribune has about 42 owned and operated stations across the country that reach about 50 million homes and also includes cable network WGN America, websites and national multicast networks Antenna TV and THIS TV. In August it terminated its $3.9 billion merger with Sinclair, after federal regulators moved to hold hearings to further look into the transaction, a signal that its chances of being approved were diminishing.  Tribune subsequently sued Sinclair for $1 billion for breach of contract. Sinclair counter-sued shortly after.  

Atlantic Broadband said it has completed the purchase of FiberLight LLC’s South Florida fiber network, a deal that will significantly increase the cable operator’s high-speed fiber footprint in the state.

Atlantic Broadband first announced the FiberLight deal in January. The deal, adds 350 fiber route miles to the cable company’s existing South Florida network, roughly doubling its footprint in that part of the state while increasing its ability to serve data center customers in that are by about 30%.

Related: A Small Op That Pulled Off a Big Task 

“As the region grows and more businesses enter, we are excited that we can now offer this expanded fiber network,” Atlantic Broadband CEO Rich Shea said in a statement. “Through this strategic partnership, we are giving businesses the ability to innovate, grow and contribute to the region’s economic growth - a commitment that we’ve made to South Florida and all the geographies we operate in.”

The latest deal comes on the heels of a series of transactions over the past few years, including the purchase of MetroCast Cable Systems in January, which enabled Atlantic Broadband to offer a diverse footprint extending up the East Coast from Florida to Maine. 

Technology licensing company TiVo said Wednesday that its cost to litigate patent disputes increased by $5.6 million in the second quarter, as it continues to lock horns with Comcast.

TiVo rendered its Q2 report a day after it suffered a defeat in its fight to get Comcast to pay licensing fees used for technologies in the cable company’s X1 video system. Comcast remains an important holdout in TiVo’s quest to put the pay TV ecosystem under patent license, and TiVo has been spending accordingly in court to put the cable operator under heel.

Related: Comcast Wins Battle in Patent War with TiVo

On Wednesday, TiVo reported a 13% slide in platform solutions revenue to $72.2 million, as the company continues to steer away from selling hardware. TiVo did, however, tout new licensing business in the cable industry for its next-generation platform, with RCN, TDS, Atlantic Broadband and Service Electric all signing on in the second quarter.

TiVo also said part of the revenue slide stemmed from a notable consumer electronics company being “out of license”—a condition TiVo said it expects to resolve soon.

In total, TiVo saw overall revenue decline by 17% to $172.8 million in the second quarter.

TiVo did report a significant drop in operating expenses, which included a $6.8 million reduction tied directly to exiting the hardware business.

“We delivered a solid second quarter and we continue to stay ahead of our internal plan, including optimizing our costs,” said interim president and CEO Raghu Rau, who said he’d stay on indefinitely. For TiVo, it was the first earnings report since the abrupt departure of former CEO Enrique Rodriguez, who left in June to become CTO of Liberty Global. 

Related: TiVo Shares Dip After CEO Departure

“I am committed to remain as CEO as long as it takes to drive the strategic process to a logical, successful conclusion that maximizes stockholder value,” Rau added.

TiVo shares were up 5.35% in after-hours trading. 

Atlantic Broadband is launching a TiVo upgrade including a new voice remote as well as a new IP-based video-on-demand platform that will give its viewers more choice across a host of devices, the company said.

The TiVo Experience 4 and IP VOD (provided by SeaChange) launches this week in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine, with other markets rolling out by year's end, the company said.

MCN Indie Operators of the Year 2018 | Atlantic Broadband: A Small Op That Pulled Off a Big Task

The new TiVo interface offers "intuitive navigation and enhanced functionality, hyper-personalized viewing recommendations and an easy-to-use remote, offering conversational voice control," according to the top-10 cable operator. 

Users can search for content across standard TV, DVR recordings, and on-demand and over-the-top platforms, including Netflix.

“The new experience is not only visually beautiful, but will transform the TV experience for our customers,” said Heather McCallion, VP of products and programming for Atlantic Broadband. 

In this era of consolidation, Atlantic Broadband did something that is becoming increasingly difficult in the age of acquiring scale: It pulled off a major integration without a hitch.

Granted, Atlantic Broadband, one of two providers honored as Multichannel News 2018 Independent Operators of the Year, is a lot smaller than some of the other companies that have tried with some difficulty to assimilate recently purchased operators. But the accomplishment was still noteworthy.

Related | Vyve Broadband: Fulfilling a Small-Town Vision of Broadband

Atlantic purchased MetroCast Communications in January, a $1.4 billion deal that brought about 76,000 new video customers and 400 more employees to the cable operator. It was the first major deal the operator has made since it was purchased by Canadian cable operator Cogeco Communications.

It helped that the two companies had the same billing vendor, CSG Systems, which helped out with switching over billing and provisioning functions, according to Atlantic Broadband CEO Richard Shea.

“We prepared all fall,” Shea said. “We went from Jan. 4 to Jan. 5 without incident.”

Ensured a Smooth Transition

Atlantic transitioned the rest of the business in stages: new service bundles were available to former MetroCast customers within 30 days. Though the business began operating as Atlantic Broadband immediately after the deal closed, the company took a little more time with other aspects.

“We began offering new services, offered bundled products within the first 30 days,” Atlantic vice president of customer care Courtney Long said. “There were many synergies between the companies, whether that was like systems, from billing systems to provisioning systems. That really allowed us to expand quickly from a coverage standpoint. Most of the integration activity was completed within the first 30 days post-close.”

CSG Systems vice president of strategic business Darla Thompson, who worked with both Atlantic and MetroCast on the billing systems transition, said the long relationship the companies have had played a big role in smoothing out any switchover kinks.

“Anytime you combine companies and combine billing systems, the main goal is to make the transition as easy as possible for the service provider and for the end subscribers,” Thompson said. “For ABB’s acquisition of MetroCast, CSG used a proven process to streamline billing systems and in this case, we had two separate instances of our highly configurable billing solutions to combine. Configurability means that we can combine both billing systems into a single solution that creates a standard customer experience for all subscribers, faster, which makes the overall acquisition process easier for everyone.”

MetroCast has been a strong operator in and around New England for years. In addition to the 76,000 video additions, the deal brought about 120,000 high-speed internet and 37,000 telephone subscribers to the Atlantic Broadband fold at the time the transaction was announced. The MetroCast systems passed about 236,000 homes in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia.

“From a rebranding standpoint, we gave ourselves a little more time,” Long added. “We stretched out to May 1 to make sure we were properly outfitted, from trucks to uniforms and signage. The reality is, we operated as Atlantic Broadband on day one. We were able to integrate our call centers and from a customer experience standpoint, nothing got lost in the shuffle of that transition. We got to work very early on so we were ready to roll on Jan. 1.”

MetroCast and Atlantic have had a relationship for about three years — Atlantic purchased its much-smaller Connecticut operation in 2015 — so both companies were familiar with each other and their respective operations. The January deal increased Atlantic’s customer base by about 40% and added 400 workers to its employee rolls.

In the past six years, Cogeco, which has about 780,000 cable subscribers in Canada, had seen Atlantic as a vehicle to extend its U.S. presence.

While Atlantic will continue to look at opportunities as they come, Shea said, it will concentrate on its internal operations for the time being. As larger operators and content producers search for ways to increase their scale, Shea said Atlantic has a different philosophy.

“We like our position,” Shea said. “We’re scrappy, we’re the ninth-largest [U.S. cable operator], we operate well, we serve customers, and we offer the right products in our markets and we’re in the right markets with the network. But there are some megatrends out there that we’re all watching. We’re open to evolve; we’re well-managed to adjust to whatever comes.”

Deploying a Gateway to Bolster Video

To a smaller extent, Atlantic is already growing video and data subscribers the old fashioned way: through superior products and service. Atlantic added 270 video service subscribers in the fiscal second quarter ended Feb. 28, compared with a loss of 1,805 subscribers in the prior year. For the six-month period, video losses were nearly halved to 2,695 customers compared with 4,610 customers in the previous year. Shea gives most of the credit for the video customer improvements to the launch of its TiVo gateway service.

“We’re still experiencing the favor of what we did in Connecticut a year and a half ago,” Shea said. “TiVo was a big win and was actually our fastest deployment. Customers were looking for the next level of a video experience in a home gateway, and it had our fastest take rates ever. That gave us the confidence in why we think the rest of MetroCast will be equally well-received.”

Atlantic Broadband has been a TiVo affiliate since 2013 in its legacy systems. Atlantic vice president of programming Heather McCallion said the operator plans to roll out the gateway product to the rest of the former MetroCast systems soon, with completions expected by the late fall.

“As we move toward the gateway experience in the household, it is even more important,” McCallion said. “TiVo is the only platform that has the deepest search across all metadata of content that is coming in through apps and linear channels and on demand. We were one of the first to launch with Netflix, and we see major usage of Netflix among our subscribers. We continue to launch other apps as they become more relevant and requested. We want to make sure whatever content our customers are looking for is readily available and a few clicks away.”

TiVo has had a relationship with Atlantic Broadband since 2013; the operator was one of the first to partner with the DVR pioneer, TiVo vice president of sales for North America Jeff Glahn said. Atlantic’s success with the product has largely been due to its management commitment, he added.

“It was clear that they made it a priority to launch video,” Glahn said. “They talked about their commitment to growing the business, whether it was residential, and even going into new markets like MDUs. From the beginning Atlantic Broadband always looked and talked to their customers and would take that feedback to us.”

While distributors grapple with the need and desire for more scale, programmers appear to be the ones taking the most action at present. The Walt Disney Co. is in the middle of what could be a lengthy battle with Comcast over certain 21st Century Fox programming assets. Other programmers, fearful of losing clout with both over-the-top and traditional distributors, are expected to continue to contemplate adding more heft.

For smaller operators, that poses a particular dilemma, because they have been paying among the highest prices for programming for years. More powerful content creators can only mean one thing for small-to-midsized operators: higher programming prices.

“Scale is really important on the programming front,” McCallion said. “It’s not about subscriber count. It’s about where you operate, how much influence you have over advertising dollars in addition to subscriber fees. We are small in that respect.

“We buy a lot of our content through the NCTC, and some of it we buy on our own,” she added. “So anytime when these consolidations happen, especially when they happen without any guardrails or with few guardrails, it’s concerning. But we hold our own and we make the tough choices every single day. We have strategically removed content in the millions of dollars’ worth of value, with very little impact. This is not leveling off anytime soon, and it’s concerning.”

Those content assets that were removed were mostly regional sports networks that weren’t widely viewed, McCallion said.

Operators must learn to adapt to the changing landscape and how customers are getting video, Shea said. “You’re seeing a customization of video,” Shea said. “We’re much more concerned about, are we getting the right customers the right content? So, the mass delivery stuff, which costs a lot of money, is something we can’t do. We’re kind of edging very, very gradually to get customers what they want, and it’s not going to be 300 channels.”

That strategy fits in with the overall push to focus on broadband services throughout the industry. But it has been small and midsized cable companies that have led the charge toward broadband-centric operations.

For the two largest U.S. cable operators — Comcast and Charter Communications — broadband customers have outnumbered video subscribers since 2015 and 2013, respectively. Smaller operators like Atlantic, co-Independent Operator of the Year Vyve Broadband and others are seeing new life in the high-speed data business.

Small operators aren’t abandoning video service, though. They’re just finding a better way to deliver it.

Serving the Right Products

Through services like TiVo and others, companies like Atlantic are marrying subscription video-on-demand platforms like Netflix and Hulu with traditional pay TV offerings and lightning-fast broadband. It is a mix that, at least for the time being, appears to be working.

“We are still in the video business,” McCallion said. “There is content that people can only get through us in the full living-room experience. We continue to wholesale that and offer that through our lineup. We make tough choices every day from a content perspective.

“Our willingness to pay the same premiums has gone down,” she continued. “Quite frankly, the content is readily available, and if we can get a gateway experience with somebody in the home and still keep that customer happy consuming our broadband service and our video service to some extent, that’s a happy customer and that works for us.”

Atlantic has also undergone a major push to bring 1-Gigabit per second speeds throughout its footprint. It plans to have about 50% of its footprint covered this year, with the rest of its markets offering the service in 2019.

The 1-Gbps service is the leading product, but Long said Atlantic has also introduced faster speed profiles in between and let customers try out a 1-Gbps service to determine if it is right for them.

“It’s really hard to translate in a marketing piece the difference between 250 [Megabits per second] and 1G,” Long said. “We are working through our product and marketing efforts to make sure that our customers fully understand what’s available and that they’re trying it out and using it.”

Demand for higher and higher speeds is strong, even in rural America, Shea added.

“It is a No. 1 need,” Shea said of fast, reliable broadband service. “We operate in Tier-2 markets from Maine to Florida, and our customers have no different needs for broadband than anybody else; sometimes, in fact, even more. Our outlook is that people want three things out of life: They want power, they want water and they want broadband. It’s our job, starting with WiFi and the right products, to get there.”

As the final step of its acquisition of MetroCast Cable Systems, Atlantic Broadband said it has rebranded those systems as Atlantic Broadband and pushed ahead with a set of high-speed internet upgrades for residential and business customers in those legacy MetroCast markets.

The $1.4 billion MetroCast deal was completed in January.

RELATED: Atlantic Broadband Closes MetroCast Purchase

As part of the speed upgrade, residential subs in the former MetroCast areas have access to speeds up to 200 Mbps, and business customers can get up to 500 Mbps, depending on the market.

Atlantic Broadband also plans to start rolling out 1-Gig service to its new markets this summer.

Here’s how the current round of upgrades break down by speed tier:

Residential:

· Access tier download speeds increase from 1.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps

· High Speed Express tier download speeds increase from 5 Mbps to 20 Mbps

· Turbo tier download speeds increase from 35 Mbps and 50 Mbps to 100 Mbps

· Ultra tier download speeds increase from 105 Mbps and 150 Mbps to 200 Mbps

Business:

· Small business tier download speeds increase from 10 Mbps to 25 Mbps

· Performance tier download speeds increase from 60 Mbps to 100 Mbps

· Advanced tier download speeds increase from 120 Mbps to 200 Mbps

· Professional tier download speeds will soon increase from 200 Mbps to 300 Mbps in Berwick/Pocono, Pa.; King George and Saluda, Va., locations

· Professional tier download speeds will soon increase from 200 Mbps to 500 Mbps in Sanford, Maine; Belmont and Rochester, N.H.; and St. Mary’s, Md.

“People consume technology at an infinitely higher rate than they did just a few years ago. Residential customers may operate as many as 10+ connected devices in a household daily and businesses rely on fast speeds and powerful internet to stay competitive,” Rich Shea, president and CEO of Atlantic Broadband, said in a statement. “To ensure customers have the best user experience, we are committed to investing in the latest technology and will begin rolling out Gigabit Internet service to our new markets starting this summer.”

Quincy, Mass.-based Atlantic Broadband is a wholly owned subsidiary of Cogeco Communications.

Sprint’s legal eagles are circling more operators as the company pursues another batch of VoIP-related patent lawsuits.

The latest to join that mix are WideOpenWest, Atlantic Broadband, and TPG Global, which, recently acquired Wave Broadband and also owns RCN Corp. and Grande Communications.

The Denver Business Journal,which first reported on the suits, said the TPG-owned entities are named in the suits, which are seeking unspecified damages and permanent injunctions in each case.

Sprint is expanding those legal actions about two months after Sprint and Cox Communications cut a deal to drop the patent spat and move into a multi-year business agreement that centers on the densification of Sprint’s wireless network and other unspecified components that will “increase and strengthen other business” ties between them, leading to speculation that Cox and Sprint might have an MVNO deal that could help Cox reenter the mobile arena.

RELATED: Cox Pulls Plug on Wireless Service 

Sprint and Comcast settled a separate patent suit last fall. Time Warner Cable (now part of Charter Communications) lost its case with Sprint in a judgement handed down last year. Sprint’s suit against Cable One was dismissed by the court in November 2016, according to court documents.

RELATED: Comcast Settles Sprint Patent Spat for $250M

In December, Sprint targeted Mediacom Communications in a suit alleging that the cable operator had violated more than a dozen patents tied to VoIP services.

Canadian cable operator Cogeco Communications said its U.S. subsidiary Atlantic Broadband has completed the $1.4 billion purchase of MetroCast Cable systems in five states.

The deal was first announced in July. MetroCast was owned by Harron Communications and had about 120,000 high-speed internet, 76,000 video and 37,000 telephone subscribers at the time the transaction was announced. MetroCast systems pass about 236,000 homes in New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia

Cogeco said Atlantic Broadband raised about $1.85 billion in debt for the purchase, and obtained another $315 million through an investment from Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (“CDPQ”) for a 21% interest in Atlantic Broadband’s holding company. These proceeds were used to finance the $1.4 billion purchase price and to refinance Atlantic Broadband’s existing debt, the parent company said.

MetroCast will retain its existing brand name and will continue to offer its current TV, Internet and Phone services to business and residential customers. Starting in spring of this year, MetroCast will begin offering a suite of enhanced services under the Atlantic Broadband brand name.

Cogeco had purchased MetroCast systems in Connecticut in 2015 for about $200 million. Two years later, the Canadian company decided to go all-in, buying the rest of the company in a larger deal.

“After our highly successful acquisition and integration of the MetroCast Connecticut system more than two years ago, we understand the significant residential and business growth potential in this business,” said Atlantic Broadband CEO Richard Shea in a statement “A core strength of MetroCast has been its excellent operational and service team. We are pleased to welcome all MetroCast operating employees, including the local General Managers, to the Atlantic Broadband family. We look forward to working together to launch new and improved TV, Internet and Phone services to residential and business customers in these markets.”

Atlantic Broadband is the ninth largest cable operator in the U.S. and the deal was expected to increase its PSUs (personal service units, a mix of video, voice and broadband customers) from 602,000 to 835,000, according to earlier company statements.

“This acquisition establishes Atlantic Broadband as a strategic platform in the U.S. with a diverse footprint extending up the East Coast from Florida to Maine,” said Cogeco CEO Louis Audet in a statement. “It has been a great opportunity to partner with CDPQ for this transaction and we look forward to working with them to continue to grow this business in the U.S.”

Media and telecom deal volumes and values were up significantly in the third quarter, fueled by a growing belief that lighter regulation and economic benefits will prevail, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report.

Volumes rose 9% to 238 deals in Q3, their highest point in the past two years, compared to Q2 this year, according to PwC's Q3 2017 Deal Insights report. Values topped $31.6 billion, up 76% form the second quarter and fueled by seven megadeals. PwC defines megadeals as transactions above $1 billion in value. Leading that list was Discovery Communications’ pending $11.8 billion purchase (not including debt) of Scripps Networks Interactive.

According to PC, the Advertising and Marketing sector made up for the biggest chunk of volume – about 80 deals. In the Broadcasting sector deal volume rose 50% to 13 deals. The Broadcast and Telecommunications (42 deals) sectors, both hit two-year highs as well.  

“While the shift to digital was all the rage only a couple of years ago, market participants are realizing that a compelling digital platform may only be part of the solution and won’t satisfy sophisticated investors and stakeholders,” PwC wrote. “The ultimate goal: taking that sticky digital platform you’ve built or acquired and maximizing the underlying data to (i) improve customer engagement and (ii) identify direct or tangential service offerings, which can improve the monetization of said user base.”

Rounding out the megadeals were Crown Castle International’s $7.1 billion purchase of Lightower Fiber Networks (Telecom); and two sports franchise deals: Tilman Fertitta’s $2.2 billion acquisition of the NBA’s Houston Rockets and an investor group’s (led by Bruce Sherman and former New York Yankee Derek Jeter) purchase of the MLB Miami Marlins for $1.2 billion (Recreation and Leisure).

In the Internet & Information sector, The Walt Disney Co.’s $1.6 billion purchase of a majority stake in BAMTech led the pack,  while Atlantic Broadband Group’s $1.4 billion purchase of Metrocast Cablevision rounded out the Telecom list.

Atlantic Broadband, a unit of Canada-based Cogeco Communications, has hired Elizabeth Asencio to head of content acquisition.

In that role, Asencio will head up negotiations for content acquisition across all platforms, including linear and on-demand.

She joins a video services team led by Heather McCallion, Atlantic Broadband’s VP of video products.

RELATED: Atlantic Broadband Adds MLB.TV App to TiVo Platform

Asencio has previously held exec roles at NBCUniversal, Starz, Disney and ESPN.

Atlantic Broadband serves about 246,000 video subscribers across five regions – western  Pennsylvania; Miami Beach; Maryland/Delaware; Aiken, S.C.; and eastern Connecticut.

NYC TV Week is coming up, starting with the 27th annual Broadcasting & CableHall of Fame on Monday, Oct. 16. For more about #NYCTVWK, click here.

Atlantic Broadband said it has introduced 1-Gig residential and business broadband services to its entire Miami-area footprint.

The deployment, which leans on DOCSIS 3.1 technology on Atlantic Broadband’s HFC plant there, includes Miami Beach and surrounding areas such as Aventura, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Golden Beach, North Bay Village, Pinecrest, South Miami, Sunny Isles Beach, Surfside, Brickell, Wynwood, the Biscayne corridor and downtown Miami.

The residential version of the service, called GigaEdge, delivers up to 1 Gbps downstream and 50 Mbps down, starting with promotional pricing of $89.99 per month for new customers, while the business-focused offering, branded as Pro GigaEdge, is $199.99 per month for new customers, with a 3-year agreement.

Prior to the 1-Gig launch, Atlantic Broadband’s fastest speeds in the market offered 250 Mbps/20 Mbps.

“With the much-anticipated launch of GigaEdge and Pro GigaEdge, we continue to enhance our position as South Florida’s premier communications provider, delivering unbelievably fast Gigabit internet speeds, the most complete entertainment, and the best hands-on local service available to the communities we serve,” Elizabeth Michelsen, Atlantic Broadband’s VP of and GM for South Florida, said in a statement. “And, with today’s launch, we celebrate the completion of the final phase of Atlantic Broadband’s $6.3 million ‘FastForward Miami’ initiative.” 

Atlantic Broadband, a subsidiary of Cogeco Communications, has 246,000 TV service customers located in western Pennsylvania, Miami Beach, Maryland/Delaware, Aiken, S.C., and eastern Connecticut.

Atlantic Broadband is joining a growing number of service providers to push ahead with a premium whole-home WiFi mesh offering that utilizes access points and smart networking software from AirTies.

The new product, to be offered to residential and small-business customers, will be based on AirTies’s Air 4920 802.11 ac “video grade” mesh access points and the vendor’s dual-band client steering technology. The platform will also enable field techs and network engineers to tap into AirTies’ cloud-based Remote View performance monitoring platform.

They said Atlantic Broadband will provide additional information about its service launch and pricing later this month. 

RELATED: WiFi ‘Volcanos’ No Longer Cut It

As a point of reference, Midco, another AirTies partner, currently sells a whole-home WiFi product for a baseline price of $7.95 per month (for up to three devices, with additional devices going for $2 per month), plus a $50 installation fee.

RELATED: Midco Rolls Whole-Home WiFi Offering

Atlantic Broadband, a subsidiary of Canada’s Cogeco, serves about 246,000 TV subs in Western Pennsylvania; Miami Beach; Maryland/Delaware; Aiken, S.C., and Eastern Connecticut.

RELATED: Study: Most Consumers Prefer ISPs to Supply In-Home WiFi Products

 AirTies works with several other service providers, including Frontier Communications, Singtel, Sky, Swisscom, Vodafone, and Waoo, among others.

Atlantic Broadband has teed up some speed increases as part of “FastForward Miami,” a $6.3 million initiative announced in July 2016 focused on Miami Beach several surrounding areas.

The phase announced today will enable a new residential tier, called Pro Edge, that delivers 250 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up while also bumping speeds of existing broadband subs that will be implemented in the coming months. Atlantic Broadband is also preparing to roll out 1-Gig services by August 2017.

Here’s how the new speeds tiers stack up:

Residential

-Pro Basic (25 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up)

-Pro Advantage (50/10)

-Pro Power (120/15)

-Pro Edge (250/20)

Business

-Starter Plus (25/5)

-Express Plus (100/10)

-Unleashed Plus (250/20)

FastForward Miami also tacks on the addition of 58 SD and/or HD channels, pushing the MSO’s total past 400, along with an increase in Spanish-language and international channels.

Atlantic Broadband, a unit of Cogeco Communications, has 246,000 video subs in Western Pennsylvania, Miami Beach, Maryland/Delaware, Aiken, S.C., and Eastern Connecticut.

Atlantic Broadband launched its 1 Gigabit per second high speed data service for both residential and business customers in Connecticut Friday.

The residential service – called GigaEdge – and commercial offering Pro GigaEdge, is now available to about 37,000 homes and businesses passed in eastern Connecticut communities including East Lyme, New London, Niantic, Montville, Oakdale, Quaker Hill, Uncasville and Waterford.  

Atlantic Broadband launched the new offerings today at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in New London. The launch event featured local government and business leaders and gave local residents the opportunity to demo GigaEdge.

“As we celebrate nearly one year of serving eastern Connecticut, we are tremendously proud to bring GigaEdge and Pro GigaEdge to the region,” said Atlantic Broadband Connecticut region vice president and general manager Charles Hanley in a statement. “We are committed to continuing to provide the fastest Internet speeds, the most complete entertainment, and the best hands-on local service to the communities we serve.”

Pricing for GigaEdge starts at $89.99 per month and $249.99 per month for Pro GigaEdge.

While Gigbit service is usually more suited to commercial customers, Atlantic Broadband president and chief revenue officer David Isenberg said in an interview that the operator expects to see strong interest in the product on the residential side.

“What we have seen as we have been talking to customers is that this is going to be a more mainstream offering in the residential market sooner than people think,” Isenberg said. “The reason is that today families live their lives online. When we asked people why they wanted this, we heard pretty commonly, ‘I have three kids, they’re all streaming stuff at different times; I need to do my work at home.’ It’s really about enabling families to do everything they need to do at once. We’re looking forward to strong demand on the residential side.”

The pricing of the product also should help drive residential demand – the $89.99 price tag is promotional for one year and then the service returns to its regular price of $119 per month.

The Connecticut rollout is the first system-wide DOCSIS deployment of a 1 Gbps service for Atlantic Broadband. The company plans to make the service available in Miami next, part of a $6 million infrastructure improvement program the company announced earlier.

Atlantic Broadband purchased the Connecticut system from Metro-Cast last year, and ABB parent, Canadian telecom company Cogeco Communications has said it is interested in adding further to its U.S. footprint. Isenberg said Cogeco hasn’t changed that stance and the Connecticut operation is a prime example its intentions – a year after closing the MetroCast deal it increased data speeds right away, launched TiVo and is now launching 1-Gig service.

“This is a case study of exactly what we want to do,” Isenberg said.  

Additionally, Atlantic Broadband has also launched new residential and business Internet services in the GigaEdge footprint (East Lyme, New London, Niantic, Montville, Oakdale, Quaker Hill, Uncasville, and Waterford) with new offerings and speeds, with its fastest speeds going from 120 Mbps/10 Mbps to 1 Gigabit or 1,000 Mbps/50 Mbps.

Newport, R.I. – The set-top box competition proposal at the FCC weighed heavily on the opening of the New England Cable Telecommunications Association convention here, with one speaker calling it “an existential threat to the cable industry” and another saying “the loser in this [FCC] approach is the American consumer.”

The speaker seeing the existential threat, Charles River Associates senior consultant Stanley Besen, called the plan by Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler “bad economics” that could “sever” the business relationships between programmers and video distributors. 

He said the FCC should embrace the cable industry’s proposal to let programmers get integrated into pay-TV systems via apps and then “declare victory and go home.” But the agency seems intent on changing the way programming is delivered, he said.

The second speaker, Comcast senior executive vice president David Cohen, agreed with Besen that Wheeler’s proposal – to enable over-the-top providers to gain access to set-top data – could “blow up the cable content ecosystem.” If so, he said, that “could easily result in lesser quality of programming, higher prices and a significantly worse consumer experience.”

The Comcast top policy executive (who said this was his 14th year in the NECTA opening panel) cited encouragement cable has received from Verizon and Google to the apps-based “ditch the box” proposal. He also said “consumers don’t view this as a burning issue,” having not weighed in heavily with comments and with more comments opposing Wheeler’s plan than supporting it.

Beyond the set-top proceeding there also are big policy concerns for non-video parts of the business, which are growing faster than video, he said: the broadband data privacy and special-access proceedings under way at the FCC that target high-speed data and business services.

Cohen said the proposals were “ideologically based attacks” by the Obama administration that pose “grave risks” to the cable industry and “something we need to pay attention to for the next six months.” 

Atlantic Broadband CEO Richard Shea agreed the pending FCC actions – which might get bogged down in an election year – was worrisome because of the threat to the important business services segment for the first time. “For either one of those to come into full force would have a very chilling effect for us,” he said.

Later, Cohen said with the election of a new president, administration and FCC in 2016, it "needs to be a huge priority for our entire industry, to press the re-start button and begin to rebuild a constructive relationship between our federal government and our industry." 

Asked by the moderator, CNBC anchor Ron Insana, about the surprise Pokemon Go phenomenon, Cohen said it was a good reminder that millennials are key to driving the business and of “the importance of innovation.” To the latter point, Comcast is working hard on immersive virtual reality applications for viewing the Olympics, he said. That won’t attract a significant audience in 2016 but will grow to becom an important application at the 2020 Games, he said. 

“We have to be innovating the next things that will make people love and want our products and services, even though we have no idea what they are today.”

Sports analyst/correspondent Mary Carillo will host the 2016 Women in Cable & Telecommunications (WICT) Signature Luncheon in conjunction with NCTA's INTX Convention in Boston May 16.

That is the luncheon where WICT honors its 2015 PAR Best Companies for Women in Cable.

This year's PAR honorees in the operator category are Cox Communications, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House networks and Atlantic Broadband. Programmers are Discovery, Disney, NBCU, Turner and HSN.

Carillo is a correspondent for NBC Sports and NBC's Olympics team, as well as HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel and The Tennis Channel.

Ahead of the April 24 season six premiere of Game of Thrones, Atlantic Broadband has joined a growing list of TiVo partners to launch HBO Go, the premium programmer’s TV Everywhere service, on set-top boxes.

The integration lets Atlantic Broadband access the HBO Go app and stream originals and movies via the TiVo set-top interface. HBO Go content is also integrated into TiVo’s search and OnePass systems.

Watch theGoTSeason 6 trailer.

Grande Communication and RCN added HBO Go to their respective TiVo-powered platforms earlier this year.

That followed TiVo’s recent announcement that it had begun to offer HBO Go on its  TiVo Bolt, Roamio and Premiere retail product line, and that it would also extend support for the app on select TiVo devices that are distributed by its MVPD partners. Other TiVo U.S. MVPD partners include Buckeye CableSystem, Midco, Armstrong, GCI, Suddenlink Communications (now part of Altice Group), and Mediacom Communications, among others.

About eight months after closing a $200 million deal to buy the Connecticut cable assets of MetroCast Communications, Atlantic Broadband parent Cogeco Cable said it will continue to look for opportunistic deals in the U.S., as well as wireless partnerships in its native Canada.

Cogeco bought Atlantic Broadband in 2012 for $1.4 billion and had expected to use the company to acquire other smaller operators in the U.S. While that hasn’t quite turned out as planned – the purchase of MetroCast’s Connecticut operations in August was the first deal Atlantic Broadband has done since 2012 – Cogeco CEO Luis Audet said the company still is open to doing deals.

On a conference call with analysts to discuss fiscal second quarter results April 14, Audet said Cogeco is still seeking “value-creating opportunistic acquisitions especially in cable in the United States.”

“I think we're in a position where we could do acquisitions if they present themselves, if they make sense, if they are profitable for our shareholders,” Audet continued, adding that in the past, Cogeco’s growth was 50% organic and 50% through acquisitions.

Part of Audet’s optimism about U.S. deals could be fueled by Atlantic’s continued success.  In the fiscal second quarter, U.S. cable revenue rose 18% (6% of which was from the Connecticut acquisition). Video subscriber losses doubled to 2,000 in the period, but that was due mainly to a decision to exit certain unprofitable businesses in Connecticut and the conversion of a few Multiple Dwelling Unit (MDU) customers from bulk to retail service.

Cogeco’s expansion plans aren’t limited to the U.S. market. On the call, Audet said the operator was keen to offer wireless service in Canada, but only through a MVNO agreement. He pointed to Shaw Communications’ recent purchase of Wind Mobile, adding that the deal has been a brilliant move for Shaw – the Canadian operator now has about 700,000 wireless customers in Ontario.

“If ever they want to work with us in partnership we’ll be delighted,” Audet said.

Barclays Research media and telecom analyst Philip Huang said in a note to clients that the MVNO approach makes sense, adding that it would provide a relatively economic path to a wireless offering.

“With all the other major cable companies in Canada (i.e. RCI, SJR, QBR, and Eastlink) now also operating wireless businesses, we believe [Cogeco] is feeling greater urgency to revisit options to add wireless to its portfolio of services,” Huang wrote.

Atlantic Broadband said it has reached a carriage deal with Spanish language programmer Univision.

According to Atlantic Broadband, the multi-year, multi-platform agreement includes Univision’s broadcast and cable networks Univision, UniMás and Galavisión. Atlantic Broadband will add El Rey Network in select markets by the end of the year. The new agreement also includes on demand and online rights, expected to roll out later this year.

“For twelve years Atlantic Broadband has proudly carried Univision, uninterrupted. And, with this latest contract renewal, we look forward to continuing to work closely with Univision for years to come to ensure our customers have access to the best Spanish-language content available,” said Atlantic Broadband’s Senior Vice President and General Manager, Dave Keefe in a statement. “We know how much Univision means to our customers here in Miami, and we are committed to providing new and existing customers with Univision’s terrific programming.”

Headquartered in Quincy, Mass., Atlantic Broadband is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canadian operator Cogeco Communications and has about 246,000 video customers in five operating regions: western Pennsylvania, Miami Beach, Maryland/Delaware, Aiken, S.C. and eastern Connecticut. The deal comes as Univision recently extended carriage negotiations with AT&T U-verse.

"Atlantic Broadband has been a true partner for over a decade, working hand in hand with Univision to ensure that one of the largest Hispanic communities in America has access to world class content on multiple platforms. As a business that puts our core customers first, Univision appreciates Atlantic Broadband's commitment to this relationship. We look forward to working together for years to come," said Univision SVP, Content Distribution Friday Abernethy in a statement.