Altice’s Deal to Buy Suddenlink May Be Prelude to Pursuit of Time Warner Cable

With its $9.1 billion acquisition of Suddenlink Communications, Altice established a small foothold in the United States cable market, gaining control of a distributor with only 1.5 million subscribers in 17 states. But the deal may have set the stage for Altice to go after an even larger and more tantalizing target: Time Warner Cable.

Altice, controlled by the French billionaire Patrick Drahi, has approached Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the United States, about a potential deal, according to people with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. One of the people cautioned that the talks were very preliminary and might not lead to a deal. The latest flurry of activity injects a new foreign player into the consolidation frenzy that has been sweeping through the American cable business for nearly two years. The maneuvering is likely to continue, potentially reshaping the television and broadband infrastructure in the United States.