Expert Overview of Optimum by Altice's Services
Although acquired by Altice in 2016, Optimum by Cablevision is still marketed and sold as “Optimum” throughout the northeastern USA in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Optimum Internet uses an extensive cable network to deliver Internet, phone, and television service to both residential and business-class customers.
Optimum Network: Cable And Fiber
Optimum primarily deliver “cable” Internet, which means that data is sent over coaxial cable lines. These are either buried or sent over utility poles. In either case, they were originally installed for cable TV exclusively, but thanks to a technology called DOCSIS these lines can be used to send high-bandwidth digital data as well. This makes it easy for cable companies like Optimum to provide Internet service quickly to a wide subscriber base without the need to install expensive fiber lines to every individual subscriber. Instead, Optimum sends fiber into the general area of subscribers and only uses the coaxial lines for the “last mile” journey. While this bottlenecks the download and upload speeds somewhat compared to pure fiber optic connections, it allows the company to offer cheaper services at scale.
Optimum Ratings And Reviews
Looking at the 13,941 customer ratings collected so far for Optimum, 50.7 percent of customers recorded a positive rating. These ratings are collected at random from BroadbandNow visitors and use IP-verification to ensure that reviewers are real people as well as current Optimum customers. While the rating may seem low, this result is decent overall for the consumer broadband industry, which maintains an average rating among all providers of 48.4 percent.
Optimum And Altice
Altice is a multinational telecommunications corporation based out of the Woerden in the Netherlands. It is publicly traded on Euronext under the acronym ATC.
Altice has acquired several major Internet service providers in the US and Europe over the past ten years, including Optimum by Cablevision and SuddenLink. The transaction took place in 2015 for a reported $17.7 billion USD. Altice has not indicated that the branding of Optimum services will change, and for the time being at least the company seems to plan to continue marketing and maintaining Optimum and Suddenlink services under the existing brand names that are familiar to their existing subscriber bases in the US.
Optimum Availability
Optimum’s cable services are primarily available in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Optimum is available currently to 12.9 million residents in their service areas. Like most cable providers, they have the strongest value proposition in suburban areas where they offer faster speeds than DSL at a reasonable price.