Future of Connectivity: Satellite And Beyond — With Altice USA CEO Dennis Mathew

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-04-26

YouTube video id: LxMa8C2jlM8

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxMa8C2jlM8

[Music]
Nice. Excellent.
Thanks everyone. All right, we got a
nice crowd here. Let's hear it from you
guys so they can hear you on Twitter and
on YouTube. Let's go. All right, here we
go. Got a great crowd, great event.
Happy to be here. All right, and now the
fun ends now. Okay, so Dennis, let me
let me uh start with this. You have 4.6
million customers in 21 states. Yes. You
touch a lot of consumers. Uh what is the
vibe right now? Are people feeling good
or are they looking at what's happening
in the economy and starting to think
about cancing or downsizing? You know,
people are very concerned about their
monthly expenses. We have been looking
at uh launching an income constrained
product uh for a few months now. And so
we did some consumer research and we
asked uh customers uh what are what are
their concerns? What are they focused
on? And over 75% of the folks that we
surveyed said that they had concerns
about their monthly expenses. Our most
recent survey on mobile said that over
50%
uh price is the primary consideration
when now they're when they're choosing a
mobile provider. And so it's up to us
now to pull together products and
packages and offers that meet our
customer needs. They are looking for
quality and they are looking for value
but they have to have pricing uh value
that meets their needs. Right. Have you
seen that change at all since liberation
day? Is there a little bit more
weariness among the consumer now? You
know, it's been it's still only a few
weeks and we're continuing to learn
every day. Um, but this is uh something
that has been an issue uh in 24 and
carries into 25 and I imagine this as a
headwind. And so we're continuously
looking at how do we evolve uh how we go
to market and the offers that we put in
front of customers so that we can
provide them great quality and great
value. Let me ask you this. In an
economic downturn, do people get rid of
cable or do they keep it because that's
the only thing that they want to do
because they don't want to spend on
anything else? Well, I mean there's a
couple pieces. You know, we have
broadband, we have video, we have
mobile, and so folks, you know, need
broadband more than ever. You know the
reality is that uh children are doing
their homework, people are working uh
for tele medicine, staying connected to
their customer uh to their family. Um
and so we're seeing that folks are
staying connected but they're looking
for value. And so uh they're looking at
how they can optimize, you know,
broadband and mobile in particular. And
so as we start to talk to our customers,
they are looking for uh providers that
are able to provide both and be able to
provide discounts uh that uh meet their
needs. And so that is a topic of
conversation more and more. And I
imagine as we uh continue into this
year, we're going to have to continue to
uh meet our customer needs. So we're
here talking about the future of
connectivity. And when I think about the
future of connectivity, the thing that
comes up is satellite internet. You
know, I think about the future. Thinking
about what Elon Musk is doing with
Starlink and others are doing with
satellite internet leads me to wonder
whether the current broadband
infrastructure we have today will become
unnecessary in the face of rising
satellite internet consumption. How do
you think about it? Is Elon your
competitor now? I mean, one, it's
incredible what Elon has done, right? I
mean, you have to the the innovation and
the speed at which they're moving. It's
incredible. The reality is that uh you
know we while we are building out our
network and continuing to enhance our
speeds and now we have multi- gig
services uh across the country and many
places and we're going to continue to
roll that out. There are places that we
are very difficult to reach. It would
cost us tens of thousands of dollars.
They're very challenging and at least
today when I look at uh what they're
able to do is they're able to meet the
needs and everybody needs broadband and
so we're an advocate of that. At the
same time the the needs of speed and
reliability and availability continue to
evolve. You know the needs from 10 years
ago versus today have changed
dramatically. You know I remember when I
was starting out in the industry 100
gigs of data consumption was like a big
deal. Now I have folks that are over a
terabyte or multiple terabytes and so we
are investing to make sure that we can
build the absolute best network to drive
innovation to drive uh creativity and
you know we'll we'll continue to work
alongside these types of technologies as
different customers have different
needs. So, if I'm reading between the
lines right, Starlink van life people,
people living off-rid, you're providing
for the folks who are in bigger metro
areas. You know, I don't know where they
I don't know if they're living in vans
or off the grid, but they're living in
places that are difficult for us to
serve. Um, but you know, folks are
testing and triing different
technologies. You know, the other
technology that's available is fixed
wireless from the telco providers. That
has gained a lot of traction. That's a
wireless service. Many people have tried
that. Uh and some find that it's good
enough and some find that it's not good
enough. Especially when you have more
and more streaming, video conferencing,
you know, just uh heavy usage, people
have to figure out what makes sense for
them. If you have, you know, I know for
my for my family with two teenage girls,
you know, they're never looking at the
TV. They're looking at their iPad.
They're consuming video in ways that I
could have never imagined. And so every
family has to decide what products and
services and value propositions meet
their needs. So again, thinking about
the future of connectivity. Yes. I
wonder what you're working on because in
in a lot of areas, the internet is fast
enough. I don't think that a little bit
better speed makes a difference in terms
of where you want to end up going in
terms of selecting your provider. So, is
it just a race to the bottom on cost or
is your northstar making the internet
faster when you're talking about
connectivity? What are you working on?
We're continuously working on uh quality
first and foremost. You know, the the
pain that I personally experience when
there is a blip in the internet in my
house. Okay, I acutely feel that pain
and I'm sure every parent and every
spouse, you know, feels that pain. the
world is ending and so we are working
hard to make sure that nobody has to
have that moment and that we minimize
those moments for my own personal sanity
as well. And so first and foremost, it
just has to work. And AI is incredible,
helping us really look at how we manage
that technology even more strategically,
communicate more effectively so that
customers know what's happening, why
it's happening, when are we going to fix
it, and just keep them informed. You
know, there's things that we can
prevent. We can do proactive
maintenance. We can't prevent somebody
from running into our head end and
setting it on fire. So when that
happens, we need to tell you what
happened and then make sure that we're
reacting that things happen. Okay,
there's lots of things that happen that
cause an outage. Some things that we can
get ahead of and some things that are
just natural, you know, events, then we
have to react. And so, you know, I do
believe that it's our responsibility to
continue to drive quality and speed and
make the absolute best network available
to folks that can then innovate on top
of it. And so, if I knew what those
innovations were, I would have another
job. But I want to make these networks
available to people that can then use
that speed, use that quality to now
build applications on top, things that I
can't even imagine. So you talked
earlier when you talked about where
satellite might come in uh about those
like areas that are really remote and
there's been this conversation around
the digital divide where some people
that live in cities for instance have
great access to the internet and others
don't. How real is the digital divide
right now? You know I I've been in this
space for some time. I've spent time uh
with our community partners at Boys and
Girls Clubs, at uh food banks, at uh
folks that are working with uh various
uh constituents. And the digital divide
is real. One is the access and one is
education. And so we're working with our
community partners to provide both. you
know, as we work with the Boys and Girls
Club to provide computer labs and
connectivity, as we work with uh in New
York City, the big Apple connect, they
have, you know, over 70,000 homes that
we're able to provide connectivity to.
And so I do think it's important not
only to provide access but to provide
education on how to leverage that
connectivity whether it's for school
work whether it's for work you know I
view it as I still remember my father
you know worked in public transit
authority he fixed trains this door door
knocker came you know door salesman and
he brought uh a a set of encyclopedia
bratannica okay and my father without a
lot of money bought the Encyclopedia
Bratannica and I thought he was crazy.
And guess what? For the next 15 years, I
used that almost every day. And the and
when I was talking to the children and
working with our community partners, the
internet is that encyclopedia
bratannica. Every child deserves to have
access to that information to do their
homework. And so this is a critical part
of our mission is to provide
connectivity uh in every community that
we serve and we're partnering with those
that are on the ground to make that
access available. Okay. So we're we're
coming towards a close here. I want to
ask you about the value of connectivity.
Now obviously there's a lot of good
things you can do with internet but we
also are living in a moment where people
are lonier than ever before. You know
bowling alone that talked about how
we've left our bowling leagues and now
we're at home. Uh it would the reason
was television and TV is amazing right
now. Yes, it's very good. It's very it's
more content than ever. Is that good
though? Because we also are we're more
lonely than we've ever been. How do you
think about that? You know, I think
everything in moderation. I think every
But people aren't good at being Yeah.
Yeah. No, I I It's called binge for a
reason. You know, I I when I look at the
rise of user generated content, when I
look at the tech companies now entering
the space, um the reality is that we
have a bit of content bloat. When you
look at the traditional cable packages,
there's a lot of content that's great,
but then there's a lot of content that's
bundled in that nobody ever watches. And
so our mission is to provide the
products and the services that allow you
to watch the content that you want to
watch the way you want to watch it.
There are still folks in our uh cons
customer base that like traditional
cable TV experience, but they don't want
all the extra content that they don't
watch. And so we're working. But the
question is really about like our what's
going on with our society. Do you don't
think that contributes at all or do do
you do a does a content provider have
any responsibility? Our responsibility
is to provide uh our customers with the
content that they want to watch how they
want to watch it. and we're laser
focused on making sure we maximize uh
the product and the value and um look I
do believe that connectivity human
connectivity is important and I do
believe that there there's a lot of
value in that part of what we've done in
our own workforce is have a more
balanced approach of being in the office
to have human connectivity at the same
time people are looking for
entertainment and we want to provide
that entertainment to people in the way
they want to watch it all right well
we're here together we're also speaking
people on the internet. So, a little bit
of the best of both worlds. Let's give
it up for Dennis. And thank you,
everybody. You've been amazing. Thank
you so much.
All right. Thank you, my friend. Great.
[Music]