Buying a Cable Modem

Richard:

Clarification–

Nationally Time Warner did the splits in 2009. Time Warner Cable became a separate company from Time Warner the film and TV production company.

Charter Spectrum bought Time Warner Cable in 2016 while the TV/Movie company was bought this year by AT&T. Comcast owns neither after bid to buy the cable company was rejected by U.S. government in 2015.

However, there was a Time Warner Cable deal with Comcast in 2007 at the time when the two companies split-up Adelphia Cable. As part of that deal, local service areas were in some regions exchanged between the two surviving companies for more efficient marketing–meaning they didn’t compete in same city.

In California, Los Angeles and Southern California which was a mix of Adelphia and Comcast became Time Warner territory while the franchises in Northern California are Comcast. Houston went from Time Warner to Comcast while Dallas became Time Warner.

I am on a system in Orange County, California that was at one time AT&T which became Comcast which became Time Warner and is now Spectrum. This territory is still the @ca.rr.com domain while areas that were previously Charter territory have remained @charter.net. (Cable system I am on became MediaOne before AT&T bought it in 2000 and sold it to Comcast in 2002 but that is ancient history.) Great fun for folks like me who used cable ISP email addresses and thus got new addresses with each deal.

RR was for RoadRunner, beep beep, high speed internet which ceased using the cartoon bird after the 2009 spinoff which left the bird intellectual property with the studio company which offered to charge royalties to the cable folks.

–Jim