Altice USA (Euronext:ATC) is now offering Suddenlink gigabit Internet service in the Kinston, NC, market, which includes the city of Kinston, Lenoir and Wayne Counties, as well as Lagrange and Walnut Creek in eastern North Carolina. The company has also increased certain other residential internet speeds for existing customers at no cost.
Residential internet customers with current downstream speeds up to 75 and 100 Mbps have been automatically upgraded to 100 and 200 Mbps, respectively. The standard Suddenlink residential internet download speeds in Kinston are now 50, 100, 200, and 400 Mbps, and 1 Gbps.
The upgrades are part of Operation GigaSpeed, which Suddenlink started in 2014 with the goal of providing gigabit services in 90% of its markets by the end of 2017. Altice, which bought Suddenlink in 2015, has continued to support the project with numerous gigabit launches, most recently in Fort Ord, CA, and Bastrop, LA. The service is based on DOCSIS 3.0 in most markets, though a few deployments have used fiber-to-the-home (FTTH).
Altice also plans to launch 10 Gbps FTTH service across its U.S. footprint. That project is expected to take 5 years and is scheduled to begin later this year.