Suddenlink was an American telecommunications subsidiary of Altice USA trading in cable television, broadband, IP telephony, home security, and advertising. Prior to its acquisition by Altice, the company was the seventh largest cable operator with 1.5 million residential and 90,000 business subscribers. After Altice acquired Cablevision Systems Corporation on November 30, 2016, Suddenlink was combined with Cablevision. Together with Optimum - the name used by Cablevision for its products - Altice USA became the United States' fourth largest cable operator with 4.6 million subscribers, and the sixth largest Pay TV service provider with 3.5 million subscribers. On August 1, 2022, Suddenlink rebranded into Optimum. History The predecessor to Suddenlink Communications was Cebridge Communications that was formed in September 2003 by its parent company Cequel III. Cequel III was formed in January 2002 by Jerry Kent, a former CEO for Charter Communications, Charter's co-founder Howard Wood and Dan Bergstein, a telecommunications lawyer. The company invested in Classic Communications on February 10, 2003 shortly after it emerged from bankruptcy. Classic Communications was founded in 1992 by Merritt Belisle and Steven Seach and the company was taken public on October 31, 1999 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 14, 2001. Classic had a total of 325,000 subscribers when Cequel III assumed management of the cable provider on February 10, 2003. Shortly after Cequel III acquired cable systems located in Texas with 27,000 subscribers from Canadian telecommunications provider Shaw Communications. In August 2003 Cequel acquired 81,000 subscribers from Alliance Communications Partners. After this acquisition Cequel formed Cebridge Connections which consisted of all the cable systems Cequel acquired up to this point. The combined company had 450,000 subscribers by the time the news was announced on September 15, 2003. The company continued to acquire smaller cable systems after it became Cebridge including 78,000 from Thompson Cablevision on January 26, 2004 expanding the company into sixteen states. The company's coverage increased to twenty-three states when it closed its acquisitions of 19,000 customers from Tele-Media on June 3, 2004 and 40,000 customers from USA Media Systems on August 19, 2004. Cebridge Connections announced it would change its name to Suddenlink Communications in a soft launch on May 1, 2006 after the company completed its acquisition of 869,000 customers from Cox Communications. The hard launch of the re-branding occurred in July after the company completed its acquisition of 250,000 customers from Charter Communications after these