Five years ago this week… Altice had more than doubled the size of its US operations to over 5 million cable and WiFi homes by acquiring New York operator Cablevision Systems for $17.7 billion. Altice was quickly moving up the telco ranks in the US, having become the fourth largest cable operator in May 2015 with the $9.1 billion acquisition of Suddenlink. Cablevision was the more strategic acquisition as it placed Altice in direct opposition to Verizon in the New York territory, bringing the company dangerously close to a disruptive position. It looked like Altice’s plan was to take what it had learned about surviving in France, a severely competitive market with over 20 million WiFi hotspots at the time,…