Time Warner's Road Runner to be launched on the company's Tampa Bay cable division
STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 6, 1997--
High Speed Online Cable Service To Be Made Available to Time
Warner Cable's Second Largest Division
Time Warner announced today plans to launch its Road Runner service in Tampa Florida later this summer.
The Tampa Bay Division is one of the cable company's largest divisions, second only to the New York City division. It passes 1.2 million homes in Tampa Bay and serves customers in a seven county area of West Central Florida.
Company officials indicated that the introduction of Road Runner on the cable systems serving these areas will be gradual. The phased roll-out will commence in a limited number of homes in areas capable of receiving the service. This initial phase should be complete by the end of the year.
``Road Runner is a very special addition to Time Warner's product offering in Tampa Bay,'' said the Division's President, Jeffrey McQuinn. ``For some time now, we have been upgrading our network infrastructure with the state-of-the-art fiber optic technology required to accommodate this and other telecommunications services. We have a list of several hundred people who are waiting for Road Runner,'' he noted. ``We plan to test the service with some of those interested people in our target area first, and then roll it out to customers in other areas over the next several years''.
Time Warner has taken a very aggressive approach to the launch of its Road Runner service. Last September it officially launched the service in Akron, Ohio and since that time has added San Diego, California, Binghamton, New York, and Portland, Maine to its roster of successful roll-outs. In addition, Albany, New York and Columbus, Ohio have announced plans to deploy this summer. The company projects that the service will be available to 3 to 4 million homes by the end of the year.
For the Tampa Bay deployment, the company is using Toshiba for systems management and the Motorola high-speed CyberSUFR(TM) cable modem. Network connectivity will be provided by MCI, and Microsoft will provide a customized version of its Explorer 3.0 browser.
Road Runner was developed by the Excalibur Group, a joint venture between Time Warner Cable and Time Inc. Time Warner Cable owns and manages the world's most advanced, best clustered cable television operations, with 80% of its 12.3 million customers in systems of 100,000 subscribers or more. It is a division of Time Warner Entertainment. Time Inc. is the world's preeminent magazine publisher; a leading direct marketer of books, music and video; and a provider of content for the new media environment.
Additional information about Road Runner nationwide can be found at www.rdrun.com . Additional information about the Tampa Bay deployment can be found at www.timewarnercable.com .
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