I'm certain you somewhere in one of your households or in one of your family members, you guys have upgraded your speeds. And so that's going to continue. You are going to require better and better connectivity. You're going to require your upload speeds to be better and better in order for us to be able to do these types of Zooms or for people in your household to be able to do Zooms very easily.
And so the future continues to be extremely bright for broadband. We don't see any deceleration whatsoever. Switching gears, there's been a recent movement to potentially hold cable companies accountable for misinformation on cable networks. I'm curious what you think about this concept. I've got my personal views. I'll probably keep my personal views to the side. I think from a professional standpoint, our customers require and request a certain amount of content. Some of the names that were mentioned in this letter to us clearly are content and channels that our customers want.
And so we're a provider of content for what our customers want. They have the choices to not want that content Yeah, the names that were were in this letter and that were broadly spoken about in the press. And for us, we want to make sure our customers are happy. And to the extent that they don't want that type of content or other channels, they can disconnect from us and do something skinnier, or just do a Netflix or an HBO Max or Peacock.
So, this is not a battle that I believe is geared towards us. This is something that consumers are choosing to do with their own feet and their own wallets today. And to the extent that for whatever reason, somebody in government thinks otherwise, they should probably not be speaking to us, but they should be speaking to someone else.
Let's talk about the future of linear cable TV. Do you envision a day where Altice does not offer linear cable TV? Because the economics get worse and worse every year.
As we've been speaking, since I've known you over the last five years, the story is still the same. Price levels for content continue to rise. Eyeballs for content over big bundles continue to fall. This is an equation that continues to play out quarter over quarter in the public markets.
Obviously, broadband continues to be the story and continues to make cable companies and fiber companies very attractive investment propositions because of broadband. But the pure video solution — there are truly two different types of subscribers. There are those who have been subscribers to a video cable bundle for more than three years which are profitable. And then anyone that's been a subscriber for less than three years is unprofitable.
So as fewer people sign up and the attachment rates on gross adds continue to decline, which is what we're seeing, then how do you protect your long-term customers who really just enjoy still having the cable bundle? I am certain we will be able to figure out ways to work with our partners in the content world to make that transition smoothly to some type of an OTT format that's attractive — maybe where we don't have as much economic play in there.
That way, we don't have to deal with the diminishing returns that we are doing regularly. But at the end of the day, most content, more and more, is being consumed over broadband. As people move away from the cable bundle, by definition, everything is going to the OTT world over broadband. So, do I really need to be providing a bundle?
I think there's a lot of people already out there providing bundles. So I think it's a question of time. I can't tell you when, where and how, but it's a question of time for cable operators in general to completely reevaluate whether or not they're going to be in the video business.
So let me ask that question in a slightly different way. Do you envision a day where cable TV, as we know it, simply no longer exists? For sure. Everything is going to be IP-based, and then the question is because everything is IP based, and you have so many different choices As technology and integration technology continues to get better and better, you're going to be able to aggregate that on your OTT platforms, your smart TV. Your Samsung TV today already has, say, 20 apps, 30, 40 apps already there.
The pain of it is you're always clicking between the apps, all the time. Once you can get the whole aggregation together and make it look very similar to what you do in a cable environment, then that interactivity becomes second nature and doesn't really matter who's doing the bundle.
It could just be your set-box provider, your smart TV provider. So this idea that some media executives have that there's going to be a floor at 50 million subscribers , that's ultimately fantasy? So it's just a question of time. People grow up in a certain way. I tell my kids all day long, how could you spend 10 hours a day on your iPhone? And they're like, "Daddy, that's our life. We didn't go out in the woods and build bricks and castles and stuff like you.
That stuff is boring. My whole life is on my phone. Do you feel like this transition to streaming is good for the industry? It seems to me there's a scenario where media companies, by and large, end up with worse financial results in a streaming world compared to the cable world.
Listen, I'm not running a media company today, but I do think there's some truth in what you say. When people start getting valued on an OTT subs basis, that are probably returning less money than affiliate fees coming from a cable operator to them, it doesn't psychologically make sense.
Maybe you can distribute a lot quicker through an OTT platform than you can today. But as you continue to slice and dice habits for what people watch on TV, I think people will start leaving a lot of some of the traditional content providers.
There will be a lot of people who do subscribe, but there will be people who'll just walk away from it completely. So, time will tell. Markets are a little bit crazy for growth right now. But in a couple of years, as this all settles out. There's already starting to be some winners and losers. All of it? My kids don't want that. They're not that into Sesame Street. That's exactly right. Our children are going to be holding the wallet in 20 years, and they're going to have their preferences about how things are run.
The big three wireless operators in this country have championed their 5G products as true competitors to cable broadband. Do you feel 5G wireless is a real threat to your broadband dominance? I mean, you'd expect me to say that, but I really don't. I believe it is complementary.
People want better and better broadband connectivity inside and outside of the home. At the end of the day, a wireless connection, no matter what technology, 5G, 10G, whatever you want to call it, it ultimately terminates on a fixed line. And it has to go through a fiber connection because the fiber connection ultimately takes it out to the World Wide Web and allows you to have connectivity.
If wireless has to connect through airwaves to ultimately a fixed line connection, that connectivity always is going to be less productive and robust than a full end-to-end fiber-to-the-home connectivity, not only from a performance standpoint and a bandwidth standpoint but purely from a price standpoint. The price per gig over wireless is more expensive than the price per gig over fixed because the marginal costs are de minimis over fixed where there are marginal costs on wireless.
If everyone was on an unlimited plan that was never throttled on wireless, and they were consuming to gigs of data like we see from our fixed line customers, the entire wireless infrastructure would explode. So, you need both, and you do want good connectivity when you're outside the house, but when you're driving, you don't need necessarily to have the most amazing connectivity. Your Apple carplay is going to work well. Speaking to reporters after the event, Drahi said Altice N.
If you end up being No. Over the next 12 months the Altice name will replace Optimum on company buildings, employee uniforms, repair trucks and advertisements, according to Michel Combes, CEO of Altice N. Combes on Monday declined to say how much the rebranding will cost, though he said the company was saving money by reducing the number of ad agencies it uses from 10 to one. Real Estate Technology Cars Columns. Expand the sub menu Theater.
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