Altice’s $3.6 billion bid to extend US

The expansionist cable operator spotted an opportunity to acquire Atlantic Broadband, which, as its name suggests, serves customers on the eastern seaboard of the US and whose coverage area is in many places adjacent to its own. The deal would have added the country’s ninth largest cable operator and its 1 million-plus customers to Altice’s stable, which currently houses Suddenlink and Optimum, the established cablecos Altice picked up a few years ago for around $27 billion, and regional player Service Electric Cable T.V. of New Jersey.

That last deal, a $150 million transaction that closed in July, served to indicate that Altice’s North American spending spree was perhaps not at an end.