Cablevision's commercial services unit lights up 7,000th building in NYC metro area, after adding more than 1,000 locations to its fiber network in the past year.

Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

April 17, 2014

2 Min Read
Lightpath Fiber Lights 7,000 NY Buildings

Even as its revenue growth has slowed down, Lightpath is continuing to add new commercial buildings to its all-fiber network at a record pace.

Lightpath , the dedicated business services arm of Cablevision Systems Corp. (NYSE: CVC), announced Wednesday that it has now lit up 7,000 commercial locations in the greater New York metro region. That represents a jump of more than 1,000 buildings in the past year. (See Lightpath Announces 7,000 Lit Locations.)

Lightpath -- whose network spans more than 5,800 fiber route miles throughout New York, Long Island, Westchester, southern Connecticut, and northern and central New Jersey -- said nearly half of the latest additions came in New Jersey. The Cablevision unit has been focusing heavily on that region over the last couple of years after saturating most of the rest of its territory.

Lightpath continues "to see considerable opportunity" in New Jersey, Julia McGrath, SVP and chief strategy officer, told Light Reading. This is "especially true given how underserved mid-market businesses are in this region. In many cases, when we expand into a new region, we are the first fiber providers to do so, opening a world of opportunity for businesses," she said.

Lightpath is particularly making inroads among middle-market firms spending between $1,500 and $30,000 a month on telecom and Internet services, McGrath said. The division concentrates on middle-market and larger firms spending at least $1,500 a month on telecom and Internet services, leaving smaller firms to another Cablevision unit.

In addition, McGrath said Lightpath is pursuing multi-tenant locations, "where there is opportunity to connect several customers." While the number of firms per location may vary, she said the unit "pays closest attention to buildings with tenants that look like existing Lightpath customers."

The latest Lightpath network expansion comes as more mid-sized firms, following the lead of larger enterprises, are seeking support for cloud-based services and applications, employee mobile devices, videoconferencing services, and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Lightpath executives say they are especially seeing this growing demand for more sophisticated services from the professional services market, including engineering, accounting, finance, insurance, real estate, and law firms.

The latest expansion wave also comes as Lightpath officials continue to seek ways to re-stoke the unit's revenue and income growth after several nearly flat quarters. In its latest earnings statement, Cablevision reported an uptick for Lightpath in the fourth quarter of 2013, with revenues rising almost 4% to $85 million and operating income more than doubling to $13.5 million on a year-over-year basis. The MSO credited the stronger gains to increases in Ethernet services revenues and a higher overall gross margin. (See Cablevision Bounces Back.)

— Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

About the Author(s)

Alan Breznick

Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

Alan Breznick is a business editor and research analyst who has tracked the cable, broadband and video markets like an over-bred bloodhound for more than 20 years.

As a senior analyst at Light Reading's research arm, Heavy Reading, for six years, Alan authored numerous reports, columns, white papers and case studies, moderated dozens of webinars, and organized and hosted more than 15 -- count 'em --regional conferences on cable, broadband and IPTV technology topics. And all this while maintaining a summer job as an ostrich wrangler.

Before that, he was the founding editor of Light Reading Cable, transforming a monthly newsletter into a daily website. Prior to joining Light Reading, Alan was a broadband analyst for Kinetic Strategies and a contributing analyst for One Touch Intelligence.

He is based in the Toronto area, though is New York born and bred. Just ask, and he will take you on a power-walking tour of Manhattan, pointing out the tourist hotspots and the places that make up his personal timeline: The bench where he smoked his first pipe; the alley where he won his first fist fight. That kind of thing.

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