Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said he expects to see further consolidation in the broadband business as companies look to build out their fiber networks, telling an industry audience at the Paley Center for Media’s virtual International Summit Wednesday that fixed wireless operators could get involved in the fray. 

Goei knows of what he speaks. Altice USA’s former parent, Altice N.V., got its foothold in the U.S. market through acquisitions, first buying Suddenlink Communications for $9.1 billion in 2015 and Cablevision Systems for $17.7 billion later that same year. Lately, Altice USA has focused on smaller tuck-in deals — like its 2020 purchase of Service Electric Cable TV of New Jersey for $150 million and its $310 million deal to buy Morris Broadband earlier this year — although it did pair up with Rogers Communications in a failed $8 billion bid for Canadian telecom and cable operator Cogeco Communications in 2020. 

“It’s very clear that in the broadband space, as it is in the media space, size does matter,” Goei said at the Paley Center conference. “Having more connectivity with your clients across multiple products and multiple services as much as possible is important.”

Goei added that while there have been several recent deals focused on the cable and fiber space, he sees future M&A activity including fixed wireless operators as well.

“I do suspect there will be more consolidation in the cable space and in the fiber space as more capital keeps on getting thrown at upgrading networks across the country,” Goei said. “However, something I’ve been talking about for quite some time is fixed wireless consolidation. We’ve seen it pretty much in all developed world economies for quite some time. We are where we were probably a year or two ago — in the early innings.”

Goei said he believes the industry is in the middle innings of convergence from a product standpoint, but added that as companies like AT&T and Verizon Communications build out fixed wireless and fiber networks, and wireline broadband providers Altice USA, Comcast and Charter Communications are expanding their product lines with wireless service, something‘s got to give. At some point, the best way to rapidly deploy the necessary infrastructure may be to buy it rather than spend the time and money building it out. 

“So, size does matter, and I expect our sector to see consolidation, as it has for the last few years, continue going forward,” Goei said.

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.”

So much for taking a breather.

European telecom giant Altice N.V., just two months after spinning off its U.S. cable operations into a separate publicly traded company, is apparently weighing the possibility of going after the second biggest fish in the domestic pond – Charter Communications.

According to CNBC, Altice N.V. chairman and founder Patrick Drahi is lining up bankers to launch a possible takeover of Charter, the second largest cable company in the country, with 17 million video customers. While there is no guarantee Altice would actually make a formal bid, the company has long coveted Charter assets. It was an early bidder for Time Warner Cable in 2015, a prize that Charter eventually won with a bid of more than $80 billion.

Analysts have estimated that any bid for Charter would have to be north of $500 per share to get the company’s attention. That would value the MSO at more than $200 billion.

Charter stock was priced at $401 per share in early trading Wednesday (Aug. 9), up 3% or $11.25 each. The stock settled down later in the day, up 1.4% ($5.41 each) to $395.06 per share. Altice USA stock, which was down 2.3% (71 cents each) to $30.35 per share early Wednesday, was about even at $30.88 each (down 18 cents) later in the day.

Charter has been the subject of merger talk for weeks, with speculation heavy around possible offers being weighed by SoftBank (parent of No. 4 U.S. wireless company Sprint) and Verizon Communications. Charter has declined comment on all of the merger rumors.

Altice USA spun off as a separate public company on June 22, almost exactly one year after closing its purchase of Cablevision Systems on June 21, 2016. Altice USA stock has performed well – it rose 14% in its first two days of trading to $34.30 per share. The stock has settled down since then, but was still above its $30 per share offering price on Wednesday.

Altice USA and its parent are expected to be aggressive buyers of cable properties in the U.S., but Altice N.V. has said it will concentrate on organic growth for the time being.

However, at its rebranding launch in May, Drahi acknowledged past comments where he said being any lower than third in a market wasn’t worth the trouble. With about 4.9 million residential and business customers, Altice USA is the fourth largest cable operator in the country and the eighth largest telecom provider.

“I said, ‘If we are not No. 1, or No. 2, or No. 3, it’s not very exciting,’” Drahi said. “How do you get there? I really don’t know. Or if I do, I can’t say.”

But he later offered a hint at his blueprint for success in other markets.

“I have always been very clear, that first is fixed [networks], then mobile, then content,” Drahi said. “We started in the U.S. with cable. We are too small in cable to go mobile at the moment. But everything is open. We will see.” 

Altice USA stock rose as high as $32.74 per share, up 9% or $2.74 each from its $30 IPO price, in its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Altice USA, a subsidiary of European telecom giant Altice N.V., priced its IPO Wednesday night at $30 per share. The cable company, which bought Suddenlink Communications in December 2015 and Cablevision Systems in June 2016, offered about 63.9 million shares to the public, raising about $1.9 billion.

The stock peaked at $32.74 each before closing at $32.71 per share on June 22.

Altice USA backers BC Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board were the biggest beneficiaries of the IPO, selling a combined 51 million shares in the offering. Altice USA sold about 12 million shares, the proceeds of which will be used to pay down bond debt incurred by Cablevision prior to its deal closing.

Wall Street expects Altice USA to use its new stock to purchase more cable companies, with many focusing on Cox Communications, despite the Atlanta-based company’s repeated insistence that it is not for sale.

Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei told CNBC Thursday that he agreed Cox “is not for sale,” adding that is possible over the next three or four years that the public company could find opportunities to “buy other stuff.” However, that doesn’t appear to be a priority in the short-term.

“Our whole job is to be ready,” Goei told CNBC. “We’re ready. We’ll let things play out as they are over the next several years. We’re not in any hurry to do anything, we’ve got a lot of operational work to do, a lot of big, big projects on fiber to the home and our One Communications Hub. We’re not in any hurry but we need to be prepared. That’s really the reason why we went public."

Despite one sizable change of heart — Comcast’s decision to withdraw its plan to merge with Time Warner Cable — the deal market didn’t disappoint in 2015, with three major transactions valued at more than $100 billion crossing the transom and more expected to enter the pipeline this year. While Charter Communications dominated the space with its pending $78.7 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable and $10.5 billion buy of Bright House Networks, other deals and players entered the fray late in the year.

Topping the list is European telco Altice Group, which completed its $9.1 billion buy of Suddenlink Communications in January and has targeted a first-half 2016 close for its pending $17.7 billion purchase of Cablevision Systems. Next is Crestview Partners’s $100 million investment in overbuilder WideOpenWest, a deal that brought cable veteran Jeff Marcus back into the business. Cable wasn’t the only industry undergoing a consolidation phase, though, as evidenced by several large TV-station group deals, including Nexstar Broadcasting’s pending $4.6 billion purchase of Media General.

While the deals have come fast and furious, and that pace is expected to continue through 2016, it has also been a period of great market volatility. Programmer stocks have been hammered as viewers look to access content via platforms other than traditional TV, and both networks and distributors are scrambling to solidify their positions and improve cost efficiencies. It’s never been more important to tap the most knowledgeable industry minds to navigate the ever-changing landscape.

With that in mind, Multichannel News introduces for the fifth consecutive year, the Money All-Stars, our annual [alphabetical] listing of the top men and women in the investment banking, private equity and financial advisory space.

RELATED:Money All-Stars Close-Up > Credit Suisse’s Marisa Drew

Ben Braun

Title: Partner, LionTree Advisors

Background: Prior to LionTree, Braun was head of Media and Telecommunications mergers and acquisitions for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which he joined in 1997. Braun has represented clients across a wide range of industry sectors, including cable, music, entertainment, TV and radio broadcasting, digital media, advertising, information services and telecommunications. Braun earned his MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth College, where he graduated with honors as an Amos Tuck Scholar.

Notable Tranactions: The Madison Square Garden Co.’s spinoff of MSG Networks; CPP’s acquisition of a stake in Entertainment One; Sprint’s sale to Softbank; Marvel Entertainment’s sale to The Walt Disney Co.; Cablevision Systems’s spinoffs of AMC Networks and MSG; Knology’s sale to WideOpenWest; Insight Communications’s sale to Time Warner Cable; Paetec’s sale to Windstream and Level 3 Communications’s acquisition of Global Crossing.

Gil Ha

Title: Managing Director and Head of Telecom Advisory, Greenhill & Co.

Background: Prior to joining Greenhill, Ha served as a senior managing director at Evercore Partners; as a partner of Rohatyn Associates; as co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Telecommunications Investment Banking Group for the Americas; and as a managing director of Lazard in New York. Prior to becoming an investment banker, Ha was a senior consultant at Accenture.

He holds an MBA with high honors from Columbia University Business School in New York and received bachelor of science degrees in Electrical Engineering with Highest Distinction from Columbia University School of Engineering and in Physics from Allegheny College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Notable Transactions: Ha specializes in providing financial and strategic advice to corporate clients and has extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, leveraged finance and restructuring transactions. Over the years, he has advised on some of the largest and most seminal transactions in the Telecom, Media and Technology sector, including AT&T’s acquisition of BellSouth; SBC’s acquisition of AT&T; Cingular’s acquisition of AT&T Wireless; the formation of Cingular Wireless JV; SBC’s acquisition of Pacific Telesis; SBC’s acquisition of Sterling Commerce; the sale of Equant to France Telecom; the breakup of US West; the sale of MCI to WorldCom; US West’s investment in Time Warner Entertainment; and MCI’s strategic investment in News Corp. Other selected transactions he has advised on since joining Greenhill include: AT&T’s divestitures of Connecticut wireline operations (to Frontier Communications); Sterling Commerce (to IBM); AT&T Japan (to IIJ) and the withdrawn $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile US; Australia’s AUD$40 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) initiative; the government of Norway on its telecom holdings; and Independent Board Committee of Telecom Italia on potential merger with H3G (Hutchinson’s Italian mobile business).

M&A Outlook: “I anticipate significant M&A activities in Europe, particularly in the telecom sector.”

David Lomer

Title: Co-Head of M&A for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, J.P. Morgan.

Background: Lomer has worked at J.P. Morgan and its predecessor companies since 1997, when he started his investment-banking career in M&A. His early experience was in London and Madrid before moving to San Francisco and New York to focus on large cap telecoms and media clients, executing Comcast’s $72 billion acquisition of AT&T Broadband and other transactions for clients including Liberty Media, The Walt Disney Co., Charter Communications and Cox Communications.

Notable Transactions: Lomer has most recently been based in London, where he was co-head of the Telecoms, Media & Technology investment- banking team, which he helped to build into the leading practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He has recently advised on Altice’s $82 billion reorganization merger, Virgin Media’s $24 billion sale to Liberty Global and Ziggo’s $10 billion sale to Liberty Global.

Gregory Miller

Title: Managing Director and Head of Media, Greenhill & Co.

Background: Prior to joining Greenhill in 2004, he was a managing director at Credit Suisse, where he worked for more than 14 years, also focusing on the media sector. Over the past two decades, he has worked with many of the world’s leading media companies, including Scholastic, Gannett, Tegna, IAC, Dentsu, Viacom, The Walt Disney Co., Bertelsmann, Lagardère, Vivendi, Thomson Reuters, Moody’s Investors Service, FactSet, Wolters Kluwer, Informa, DMGT, Cheil and many others. He has advised a wide range of consumer and professional companies on more than 100 mergers and acquisitions and capital-raising transactions in all segments of the industry.

Miller received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1993 and a B.A. in English, summa cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame in 1987.

Notable Transactions: Gannett’s spinoff of its publishing division, which created two separate public companies: broadcasting/digital (now known as Tegna) and publishing (Gannett); Gannett’s acquisition of Cars.com; Scholastic’s sale of its education technology division to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; also completed transactions in television production, consumer book publishing, professional information, digital media, events and other media segments.

M&A Outlook: “Many leading media players over the past couple of years have unlocked substantial shareholder value by separating businesses that have little operational or sector overlap and different growth profiles. Some have accomplished this separation via sales of non-core assets, and others have pursued spinoffs to create focused, publicly traded companies with capital structures consistent with their profiles and capital needs. I expect this trend will continue, partly fueled by activists, in the coming year.”

John Momtazee

Title: Managing Director and Founding Partner, Moelis & Co.

Background: Since co-founding Moelis & Co. in 2007, Momtazee has advised clients across several media sectors, including diversified media, cable television, broadcast television, broadcast radio, digital media, entertainment, publishing and outdoor advertising. Momtazee has advised and financed many of the largest, most sophisticated media clients and worked extensively with leading financial sponsors.

Prior to Moelis & Co., Momtazee was a managing director in the Global Media Group and the head of Broadcasting Investment Banking at UBS Investment Bank. Momtazee was previously an investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and then served as chief financial officer of The .TV Corp. In 2009, Momtazee was honored as one of Investment Dealers’ Digest’s “40 Under 40.”

Notable Transactions: Fairway sale to Lamar; KLAS-TV (Landmark) sale to Nexstar; KASW-TV (Meredith) sale to Nexstar; YMF Media sale to Emmis; 600-MHz auction spectrum advisory for Tegna; 600-MHz auction spectrum advisory for Sinclair Broadcast Group; Allbritton sale to Sinclair; Media General TV station divestitures to Sinclair, Meredith and Hearst; Tribune restructuring (advised UCC).

Michael Ronen

Title: Co-Chief Operating Officer of the Global Technology, Media and Telecom Group, Goldman Sachs, responsible for the media and telecom M&A business in the Americas

Background: Ronen joined Goldman Sachs in 1998 as an associate in the Communications, Media and Entertainment Group and later became its business unit manager, subsequently joining the Merger Leadership Group to work with many of the firm’s media, telecom and technology clients. From 2008 to 2010, he was also responsible for developing the firm’s M&A-related derivatives business within the Americas Financing Group. Ronen was named managing director in 2006 and partner in 2012.

Prior to joining the firm, Ronen served in the Israeli Air Force Intelligence Corps and later practiced law as an attorney in Israel, specializing in bankruptcies and financial restructurings.

He earned an LLB (JD) from Tel Aviv University in 1994 and an MBA, with distinction, from the Stern School of Business at New York University in 1998.

Notable Transactions: Media General sale to Nexstar ($4.6 billion, 2016); Activision Blizzard acquisition of King Digital ($5.9 billion, 2015); AT&T acquisitions of Nextel and Iusacell in Mexico (2014 and 2015, $2.5 billion and $1.9 billion); Vivendi’s sale of GVT to Telefónica ($10 billion, 2014); Softbank’s acquisition of Sprint ($20 billion, 2012).

M&A Outlook: “On the back of a few years of strong M&A activity in the TMT space, we continue to see significant consolidation opportunities in many areas of the Media and Telecom landscape. Secular headwinds will continue to pressure traditional media companies and their distribution partners (cable and satellite) to increase scale and remove fixed costs. The exponential growth in online and mobile consumption of content will further induce the traditional players to invest outside their comfort zones. Finally, inbound and outbound cross-border activity will also continue to influence the M&A market, with U.S. companies investing foreign cash overseas and foreign investors looking to capitalize on relatively strong secular trends in the U.S. vs. Europe and the rest of the world.”

Brent Rosenthal

Title: Partner, W.R. Huff Asset Management

Background: Prior to joining Huff in 2002, Rosenthal served as director of mergers & acquisitions for RSL Communications. Previously, he served emerging media companies for Deloitte & Touche. He is a certified public accountant and received an MBA from the Johnson School at Cornell University and an undergraduate degree in accounting from Lehigh University.

Notable Transactions: In 2003, Rosenthal authored an internal Huff white paper about the problems in media measurement, and subsequently identified Rentrak as a platform company to capitalize on this trend. He spearheaded Huff’s investment in Rentrak, led the overhaul of its management team and board of directors, and worked closely with the new management team to reinvent the company. Rosenthal joined Rentrak’s board in 2008 and has served its non-executive chairman since 2011. Rentrak completed its merger with comScore on Jan. 29 and, following the closing, Rosenthal joined comScore’s board as chairman of the Audit Committee.

Rosenthal also serves as a special adviser to the board of Park City Group and on the boards of several private Hispanic food companies. From 2006 to 2012, he served as a strategic adviser to Virgin Media’s directors and executive management, providing turnaround and crisis-management services, as well as operational and financial analysis and recommendations. From 2007 to 2010, he advised Time Warner Inc.’s executive management. In 2009, Multichannel News named Rosenthal to its annual “40 Under 40” list of influential executives.

M&A Outlook: “Traditional media companies must continue to modernize product offerings, streamline internal operations and fortify economies of scale to effectively react to the accelerating media fragmentation and the consumer’s rapidly changing media consumption habits. Also, new media companies require greater scale to effectively compete against these large traditional media companies. Therefore, the current media M&A mega-cycle will continue at the same torrid pace for the next few years.”

Alan Schwartz

Title: Executive chairman, Guggenheim Partners, and chairman, Guggenheim Securities

Background: Schwartz joined Bear Stearns in 1976 at the age of 26 after an injury to his pitching arm ended his chances of professional baseball; he was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds after graduating from Duke University in 1972, but never reported because of the injury. He worked his way up to leading the firm’s research department in 1979 and heading up its investment banking department in 1985. Schwartz was named CEO of Bear Stearns in 2008 after its stock cratered in the wake of the collapse of two of its hedge funds. Despite efforts to turn around the firm, the Federal Reserve forced its sale later that year to J.P. Morgan as the global financial crisis worsened. He joined Guggenheim Partners in June 2009 and has quickly built the boutique firm into one of the biggest players in the M&A space with clients like the Walt Disney Co., Verizon Communications, Charter Communications and Tribune Media.

Notable Transactions: Represented Verizon Communications in its $130 billion purchase of the remaining stake in Verizon Wireless from Vodafone; represented Verizon in its $4.4 billion purchase of AOL; financial adviser to Cablevision Systems in its pending $17.7 billion sale to Altice; financial adviser to Charter Communications in its pending $78.7 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable; co-manager to Tribune Media in its $517.4 million follow-on offering; financial adviser to Verizon in its $10.5 billion sale of wireline business in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications.

Chris Ventresca

Title: Global Co-Head of Mergers & Acquisitions, J.P. Morgan

Background: Ventresca, who started his 27-year career at J.P. Morgan, was named North American co-head of M&A in 2008 and global co-head of M&A in 2013. He has advised on more than $1 trillion of announced M&A transactions during his career, including a variety of strategic acquisitions, mergers and sales, as well as a number of hostile defenses and shareholder activism situations. He received an MBA in Finance from the New York University Stern School of Business and a BSE in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.

Notable Transactions: In the media and telecom space, Ventresca has advised on Comcast’s announced acquisition of Time Warner Cable (withdrawn in April 2015); Verizon’s acquisition of Vodafone’s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless; Virgin Media’s merger with Liberty Global and Verizon’s sale of its tower assets to American Tower Corp.

RELATED: Dolans to Drahi: Cash and Carry

With the stroke of his pen, the maverick European telecom mogul Patrick Drahi cemented Altice’s U.S. foothold as the fourth-largest cable operator with a $17.7 billion, all-cash deal to purchase Cablevision Systems, one of cable’s oldest family-owned companies.

The Cablevision deal comes on the heels of Altice’s pending $9.1 billion purchase of Suddenlink Communications, a midsized operator with 1.2 million customers in the Southwest and Midwest. With Cablevision, Drahi’s Altice gets 2.7 million cable customers in the country’s largest market — metropolitan New York City, specifically the Bronx, parts of Brooklyn, Long Island, and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut — and overnight becomes the largest foreign owner of a U.S. cable MSO, with 4 million subscribers.

But Altice’s speedy ascension up the cable ranks — it had no U.S. presence six months ago — brings with it vast uncertainties. And while chairman Patrick Drahi believes he can better run a U.S. cable business by applying European cost disciplines, some analysts believe he will face big challenges.

“Six months ago, we were nonexistent,” Drahi said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference, adding that the new company still has more room to grow.

“This is moving fast, but we’re not in a hurry,” Drahi said. “There are more opportunities to consolidate at these same prices.”

Most analysts agree that Cablevision could be the tip of the iceberg for Altice.

“In our view, clearly Altice is not done with its acquisition strategy, and this could include any telco assets not nailed down,” wrote Pivotal Research CEO and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak.

Critics immediately centered on the deal’s high price — it works out to about 9.5 times cash flow, not including synergies, and 6.1 times with synergies — and what many have said are unrealistic cost-cutting goals. Typical deals are in the range of 7 to 8 times cash flow.

In a blog post, MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett said squeezing $900 million in cost synergies from Cablevision could be a chore, especially since Charter Communications has said it will derive about $800 million in cost synergies in its merger with Time Warner Cable, a company about five times larger than Cablevision.

“Cost reductions like those won’t just mean cutting SG&A,” Moffett wrote. “It will mean slashing customer service; repair and maintenance; and sales and marketing (specifically, channel-mix optimization and back-office upgrades). It’s hard not to imagine that that might have at least some impact on market share.”

Altice is one of the most rapidly growing telecom companies in Europe. Based in the Netherlands, it spent about $28 billion on deals in 2014 alone. Altice has about 3.1 million cable customers in France and Israel and more than 20 million wireless customers across Europe.

Altice has managed to squeeze profits out of its businesses with a “slash-and-burn approach,” drastically reducing head count, eliminating what it says are unnecessary costs and aggressively negotiating contracts with suppliers.

Drahi said he also sees savings in electricity costs, by eliminating amplifiers in the network, and in shifting more of the sales function online.

“My model is to bring U.S. ARPU to Europe and the European expense to the U.S.,” Drahi said.

The recipe is simple, Drahi added — control excess costs and the cash flow will take care of itself.

Altice also sees cost-cutting opportunities in employee salaries. CEO Dexter Goei said more than 300 Cablevision employees make $300,000 per year or more.

“I understand that,” Goei said at the conference. “There’s a new sheriff in town. We will probably run things a little differently.”

Still, cost containment wasn’t Cablevision’s only problem. The company has been bleeding subscribers in the past few years after a strong period of growth in the early 2000s. According to Moffett, video subscriber losses in two key areas — the New York boroughs of the Bronx and Brooklyn — have accelerated to 6% and 8% in the past quarter, indicating that Cablevision’s competitive position against Verizon Communications’s FiOS TV is worse than it has been letting on.

Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam told CNBC’s David Faber last week that he welcomes Altice as a competitor, adding that while Drahi talks tough, he’s heard it before.

“Success in Europe or Asia doesn’t necessarily mean success in the U.S.,” McAdam told CNBC. “Our product, fundamentally, is superior when you have fiber into the home versus any of the DOCSIS products. We welcome them into the market.”

Drahi’s strategy hasn’t quite been solidified yet, but he hinted that higher prices for broadband and more flexible video packaging could be a path. “I think broadband is too cheap,” he said.

In a research note, Moffett said that higher broadband prices may be the only way Altice can offset video losses.

“Verizon’s FiOS brand managers must be licking their chops,” Moffett wrote.