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WOW! (formerly WideOpenWest), is the 12th largest cable provider in the United States. WOW! has been ranked highest by J.D. Powers and Associates for the past two years in their Residential Cable/Satellite Satisfaction Study and was the highest ranked cable company in the 2004 study.
The Back Story
During the 1990s, encouraged by the work on the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, a number of investors led by local telephone companies established competitive broadcast cable services into various cable TV markets. These entities became known in the industry as 'cable overbuilders', meaning they would build new cable infrastructure into areas where there were existing operating cable systems. Some of the initial 'cable overbuilders' included Knology Holdings, Americast, and RCN. By the year 2001 less than 5% of the households in the United States had a choice of cable companies.
Room for expansion
Founded in November 1999 in Denver, CO, they initially served about 200 people in the Denver area after they had completed building their network in April 2001. In May 2001, the very next month a midwestern network owned by SBC telecommunications branded with the name Americast, was purchased by WideOpenWest for an undisclosed amount per user-connection, estimated to have been at a cost of $1000 per user. This purchase opened WOW! to over 310,000 new users. The Americast cable brand was initially under control of Ameritech and served the markets surrounding the cities of: Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Cleveland and, Columbus, Ohio. Americast has also been the brand name used for GTE's cable systems in Cerritos, California and Pinellas County, Florida, and for BellSouth's cable systems in the Atlanta, Georgia area; those operations were sold to different owners.
WOW! is no longer servicing the Denver area. WOW! is currently providing service in the metropolitan areas of Detroit, Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland and service is planned in Evansville, IN by the end of 2006.
Current services
Apart from analog and digital cable service, WOW! also provides high-speed cable internet at speeds ranging from 112 kbit/s up to 6.0 Mbit/s and, VoIP telephony service. WOW! currently utilizes C-COR's SAM platform for subscriber provisioning. It is integrated to CSG's ACP system using the Mentis Real-Time Response (RTR) platform. WOW! also uses the Mentis RTR platform to deliver a completely automated Workforce Automation solution, to provide end-to-end online order entry for a 24x7 sales portal, and to provide Order Management functions that enable WOW! to bond its VOIP orders to its various trading partners.
External links
Sources
(1) J.D. Power and Associates Reports; http://www.jdpower.com/ (2) BusinessWeek, Cable/Satellite Providers; http://images.businessweek.com/tc/jdpower/cable_sat/index.htm (3) The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, History of Cable; http://www.ncta.com/ (4) The Federal Telecommunications Commission, Telecommunications Act of 1996; http://www.fcc.gov/ (5) Business First of Columbus, Americast sale to reshape cable service; May 25, 2001 (6) The CATO Organization, Economic and Political Consequences of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, By Thomas W. Hazlett (7) Consumers Union, Lessons From 1996 Telecommunications Act; http://www.consumersunion.org/
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