Altice USA Hires Jean-Charles Nicolas to Lead Mobile Unit

Jean-Charles Nicolas

Jean-Charles Nicolas

Pushing ahead with a plan to launch mobile services next year, Altice USA has hired Jean-Charles Nicolas as senior vice president of Altice Mobile.

In the newly created role, Nicolas will lead the development and launch and ongoing market strategy for Altice USA’s mobile service, set to debut sometime in 2019 and tie into the company’s “full” MVNO deal with Sprint that will give Altice control over the resulting service’s features and customer experience

RELATED: Altice USA, Sprint Strike ‘Full’ MVNO Deal

Altice USA is also looking to test the emerging CBRS shared spectrum band and a small cell strategy that could help it offload a portion of its anticipated MVNO costs.

RELATED: Altice USA Eyes CBRS Small Cell Strategy

Nicolas, who reports to Altice USA co-president and COO Hakim Boubazine, will also head up the Altice Mobile’s customer experience, including operations, marketing, sales, and customer care. He and his mobile team will be based at Altice’s headquarters on Long Island.

Nicolas joined Altice Group in 2009, and most recently was deputy CEO and CFO at Altice Dominicana, where he managed the daily operations of all the company’s services, including its mobile business. Nicolas is also late of Neuf Cegetel, a France-based wireless and MVNO provider, and Alten, a tech and engineering firm that worked with mobile companies such as Alcatel and Nokia.

“Jean-Charles brings with him more than 20 years of experience in the mobile communications industry, and we are pleased to have him join us in the U.S. as we prepare to launch our mobile service and introduce disruptive and differentiating offers to our residential and business customers,” Boubazine said in a statement. “Our expansion into the U.S. mobile industry is an exciting evolution for Altice USA, enabling us to deliver best-in-class entertainment and innovative digital services through high-quality, ubiquitous and seamless connectivity. We are making great progress readying our network infrastructure and customer management platforms to support our mobile offering and are glad to have Jean-Charles onboard for this next phase as we bring our wireless product to market.”