Understanding the 3 Time Warner's

Time Warner Telecom and Time Warner Cable have been different companies for over 20 years. They have completely separate networks with no overlap. Originally TWC sold coax cable modem and TWT sold fiber. They were separate always but owned by the same parent company Time Warner Entertainment. Time Warner Cable decided to build their own fiber network and Time Warner Telecom was spun off in 1998. They continued to lease the name Time Warner Telecom for 10 more years until Time Warner Cable refused to renew it due to market confusion with the similar names. Time Warner Telecom legally changed the name to tw telecom in 2008 as a result. They haven't been allowed to use the name Time Warner for 10 years but their fiber assets are still commonly misrepresented by other carriers who use them for fiber access as "Time Warner" or "Time Warner Telecom" which is not correct and commonly leads to confusion with assets owned by Time Warner Cable. tw telecom was acquired by Level 3 in 2014. Level 3 was acquired recently by Centurylink in late 2017.

Time Warner Cable was recently acquired by Charter in 2016 and changed the go to market name of both companies to Spectrum.

These legacy assets are completely diverse:

• Legacy Time Warner Cable = Spectrum
• Legacy Time Warner Telecom = Level 3 /CenturyLink

Another company commonly referred to as "Time Warner" was the former parent company Time Warner Entertainment but doesn't do anything in Telecom. They own television and movie content. They were recently acquired by AT&T in June 2018 for their programming assets.

Not to be confusing or anything.... LOL!! It is no surprise I sometimes get asked if Time Warner Cable was acquired by AT&T.

The good news is all the old Time Warner's have been acquired so hopefully it doesn't take another 10 years for the legacy names to disappear from carrier fiber local access option lists.

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