MediaOne

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MediaOne was a cable company created by U S WEST in 1995.

The cable service started as a division of U S WEST Media Group. In time the service also included pay-per-view, and a self-branded high-speed cable modem internet service named Hiway1 ("Highway One"). Hiway1 was one of the pioneers of the Cable modem technology in America. Due to the early adoption of the technology, customers could not yet have access to any bi-directional communication via the cable modem. Hiway1's cable company's infrastructure was incapable of two-way communication. The customer would only be able to use the Hiway1's cable modem for downlink and a regular in-home modem (presumably over the telephone line) for uplink communication.

Most early period modems for the service were created by the manufacturer LANcity(Bay Networks).

Around late/1995 or so, the Cable Modem service was later later renamed to MediaOne Express. Almost as soon as that was done a co-branding deal concluded with Time Warner's Cable modem Internet business where MediaOne would became MediaOne RoadRunner. U S WEST founded MediaOne (as Media 1 with the number) in 1995 in Atlanta, Georgia with acquisitions of GCTV serving the City of Atlanta and Dekalb County, and Wometco Cable's assets in the suburbs.

In 1996, MediaOne purchased the Downtown Boston market, then controlled by New York-based Cablevision for $11.8 billion dollars. The deal upon closure effectively made the Boston/New England region MediaOne's largest clustered market. In exchange for Downtown Boston, CableVision was traded several of MediaOne's upstate-New york area markets.

In 1998, U S WEST spun off MediaOne's parent company, U S WEST Media Group as the MediaOne Group.

In 1999 Comcast first made bid for MediaOne. Comcast said they would pay $60 billion and assume all of MediaOne's debt.[1], [2] On May 6, 1999 AT&T, not wanting to be outdone promised about $62 billion instead, and paid the "breaking up of the MediaOne-Comcast merger agreement" allowing MediaOne to be purchased by AT&T.

MediaOne RoadRunner et el. next became AT&T branded. The portion which ran television was "AT&T Cable Television", another part for Internet became known as "AT&T Broadband Internet" and the third became "AT&T Digital Phone". The buyout of MediaOne by AT&T happened close on the heels of AT&T's other cable company purchase TCI. That buyout by TCI already made AT&T the largest Cable Company, and MediaOne only served to increase their margin of leadership.

AT&T was unable to make the merger work for many reasons, and split the company into three separate companies: AT&T Wireless was spun off as a public company, AT&T Cable/AT&T Broadband was purchased by Comcast. The regular phone business continued as a public company.

Motto: "This is Broadband. This is the way."

The main markets & regions for MediaOne were:

  • "MediaOne Atlanta" - Atlanta, Fayetteville (Georgia)
  • "MediaOne Chicago" - Chicagoland Metro Area (Illinois)
  • "MediaOne Denver" - Denver (Colorado)
  • "MediaOne Florida" - Jacksonville, Miami (Southeast/Southwest Florida)
  • "MediaOne Midwest" - Metro Detroit/Ann Arbor, Erie Shore Region of Ohio (Toledo, Port Clinton, Fremont, Sandusky and Cleveland areas) (Michigan, Ohio)
  • "MediaOne Minnesota" - Twin Cities (Minnesota)
  • "MediaOne New England" - Boston (East/West Massachusetts, New Hampshire)
  • "MediaOne West" - Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, Mendota (California)

Besides the United States, MediaOne Group also had serval smaller business operations in:

Almost all of MediaOne's international holdings were sold-off to satisfy regulators for the merger with AT&T.

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