European cable company Altice has agreed to buy Cablevision for $10 billion. This is the company's second purchase of an American cable company.

The deal between Altice and Cablevision will create the number four cable operator in the U.S. market. Cablevision serves 3.1 million customers in the New York metropolitan area with TV, voice and high speed Internet services.

With debt included, the Cablevision purchase will cost about $17.7 billion for Altice, MarketWatch reports.

Altice is based in Luxembourg and run by billionaire investor Patrick Drahi. It has operations from France to Israel and has been very active with deals lately in Europe and the U.S.

Altice completed several deals in Europe and then in May agreed to buy U.S. cable company Suddenlink Communications for $9 billion.

Altice has a unique bundle that is saving customers money and helping them be very profitable. The bundle includes four different services: high speed Internet, TV, mobile phone services and home phone services. There is no quadruple bundle like this available in the U.S.

"My vision is to do the same in the U.S., but bigger," Drahi said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal over the summer.

Cablevision was seen as a possible acquisition target with the market getting smaller due to larger corporations making moves to buy out smaller companies. Cablevision is the fifth-largest cable company in the U.S. and the eighth-largest provider of pay-TV services. AT&T made it to the No. 1 spot for pay-TV services when it acquired DirecTV earlier this summer. Comcast is the top broadband provider, but Charter could jump to the top if they are approved by regulators to takeover Time Warner Cable.

Altice will have all of New York's Cablevision customers and could help them get started for future business in the U.S. Cablevision's big competitor in the New York metro area is Verizon, which offers FiOS services.

According to Engadget, Cablevision will keep Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the New York Knicks and Rangers sports teams.