Altice USA inked a nationwide roaming deal with AT&T, aiming to close coverage gaps before launching a new commercial mobile product under an MVNO deal with Sprint in the coming months.
On a call with investors, CEO Dexter Goei revealed the company also signed international roaming agreements with multiple unnamed partners.
Goei explained the deal with AT&T will help fill in holes at the edge of Sprint’s network to ensure “an aggregate 99 per cent nationwide coverage”, while the remaining partnerships will extend the reach of its service overseas.
The CEO said Altice USA recently completed network testing and offered service to its employees ahead of an expected commercial rollout in the current quarter.
He declined to comment on whether $25 pricing reportedly offered to employees will be extended to consumers. However, Goei noted the company is “very focused on making sure that we maximise offload onto our own [Wi-Fi] network” to maintain competitive economics and low prices for customers.
“We obviously expect the AT&T usage to be significantly…less than the Sprint one. And similarly, obviously the Sprint usage relative to our own Wi-Fi network to be a fraction in terms of the usage. So we think overall, the economics continue to be very compelling for us.”
Goei confirmed the company’s MVNO agreement with Sprint will survive well beyond the operator’s proposed merger with T-Mobile US, and include 5G service provisioning. But he didn’t rule out the possibility Altice USA might team up with Dish Network, which is set to replace Sprint as a fourth major operator in the country, “at the right time and if it makes sense”.
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