Road Runner (ISP)
Encyclopedia
Road Runner High Speed Online is a US Internet service provider
(ISP) which provides cable Internet service over DOCSIS
-compatible modem
s. A division of Time Warner Cable
, it also contracts its service to other cable providers, often in competition with ISPs owned by local telephone companies
.
, NY
, under the banner Southern Tier On-Line Community. Later it became known as LineRunner (a moniker subsequently employed by VoIP service), before Time Warner Cable
adopted the current brand name.
Road Runner employs the Road Runner
character from the Looney Tunes
/Merrie Melodies
cartoon series as its mascot
, a property of its former Warner Bros. corporate parent.
Road Runner® Lite competes directly with less expensive DSL
service, offering a lower bandwidth for a similar cost. The specific data rate varies, but the average is 768 kbit/s downstream and 128 kbit/s upload. Road Runner® Broadband Turbo with PowerBoost® (form. Road Runner Premium) gives up to 25 Mbit/s download and 1 Mbit/s upload (in 16 second bursts based on network conditions). Cost and speed tiers vary by area, and pricing packages are heavily slanted to drive consumers toward the declining home phone and cable television services.
The new Wideband Internet and Road Runner® Broadband Extreme service tier offerings are a part of Time Warner Cable's rollout of the DOCSIS
3 upgrade in the following markets:
On April 1, 2009, the cities to have metered billing were announced. In addition to Beaumont, Texas, the cities would be Rochester
, NY,
Austin
and San Antonio, TX and
Greensboro
, NC
.
These metered based billing plans were canceled according to Time Warner "due to customer misunderstanding"
Bandwidth is defined as a transfer rate measured in bits/second (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(computing) (comparable to miles per hour), however bandwidth caps refer to the total amount of data transferred (comparable to miles traveled, usually per month).
Caps would range from 5 GB to 100GB with no unlimited option. The bandwidth will include downloads and uploads. If a user goes over, they will be charged $1 per additional gigabyte
. Time Warner Cable announced they would provide a meter for users to monitor their usage. The new plan was set to begin in the summer of 2009, however due to protests they had decided against the bandwidth caps. Currently, users have unlimited bandwidth usage. Time Warner would have offered unlimited data for $150/month had the plan continued.
CEO
Glenn Britt justified the new billing plans, claiming the infrastructures had to be continuously upgraded and users would pay for how much they use.
Facebook
groups have been created in protest in addition to an online petition and a website dedicated to stop the movement. Other websites have been recently following the Time Warner cap plans that were already following broadband internet providers metering and capping plans,
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and congressman Eric Massa
, both of whom represent portions of the Rochester, New York market that would be affected by the changes, announced their opposition to the plan and even went as far as to threaten legislation to ban such a scheme. On April 16, 2009, Time Warner abandoned the plan.
Road Runner Mobile 4G National Elite: gives customers unlimited access to both Time Warner Cable's 4G Mobile Network and Sprint's 3G EVDO network for $79.95 if you're a Roadrunner Standard or Turbo customer.
Road Runner Mobile 4G Elite: gives customers unlimited access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $49.95 if you're already a Roadrunner Standard or Turbo customer.
Road Runner Mobile 4G Choice: gives customers access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $39.95 if you're already bundling at least two Time Warner Cable services. The tier also caps usage at 250 MB per month.
Users get additional discounts if they are triple play customers. According to Time Warner Cable, the company will be expanding the service into Honolulu and Maui later this year, and into San Antonio and Austin in early 2010.
MediaOne
was formerly the largest of Time Warner's Road Runner partners, leaving the agreement when taken over by AT&T Broadband (subsequently absorbed by Comcast
).
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
(ISP) which provides cable Internet service over DOCSIS
DOCSIS
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-speed data transfer to an existing cable TV system...
-compatible modem
Cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...
s. A division of Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
, it also contracts its service to other cable providers, often in competition with ISPs owned by local telephone companies
Telephone company
A telephone company is a service provider of telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many were at one time nationalized or state-regulated monopolies...
.
History
Road Runner service was first launched with a 1995 market test in ElmiraElmira, New York
Elmira is a city in Chemung County, New York, USA. It is the principal city of the 'Elmira, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area' which encompasses Chemung County, New York. The population was 29,200 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Chemung County.The City of Elmira is located in...
, NY
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, under the banner Southern Tier On-Line Community. Later it became known as LineRunner (a moniker subsequently employed by VoIP service), before Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
adopted the current brand name.
Road Runner employs the Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner
Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The characters were created by animation director Chuck Jones in 1948 for Warner Bros., while the template for their adventures was the work of writer Michael Maltese...
character from the Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
/Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
cartoon series as its mascot
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
, a property of its former Warner Bros. corporate parent.
Tier service
Road Runner tier data rates vary by level of service and area. The maximum advertised speeds for these services are:- Lite: 768 kbit/s / 128 kbit/s
- Basic: 1.5 Mbit/s / 256 or 384 kbit/s, or 3.0 Mbit/s / 384 kbit/s (depending on market)
- Broadband (form. Standard): 7 Mbit/s or 10 Mbit/s / 384 kbit/s or 512 kbit/s or 1 Mbit/s (bursts: 15 Mbit/s / 512 kbit/s or 1 Mbit/s) (depending on market)
- Broadband Turbo with PowerBoost®: 10 Mbit/s or 15 Mbit/s / 512 kbit/s or 768 kbit/s or 1 Mbit/s (bursts: 25 Mbit/s / 512 kbit/s or 1 Mbit/s) (depending on market)
- Broadband Turbo Plus: 20 Mbit/s / 1 to 5 Mbit/s (this service tier is only available in California and Texas)
- Broadband Extreme: 30 Mbit/s / 5 Mbit/s
- Wideband Internet: 50 Mbit/s / 5 Mbit/s
Road Runner® Lite competes directly with less expensive DSL
Digital Subscriber Line
Digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that provides digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line ,...
service, offering a lower bandwidth for a similar cost. The specific data rate varies, but the average is 768 kbit/s downstream and 128 kbit/s upload. Road Runner® Broadband Turbo with PowerBoost® (form. Road Runner Premium) gives up to 25 Mbit/s download and 1 Mbit/s upload (in 16 second bursts based on network conditions). Cost and speed tiers vary by area, and pricing packages are heavily slanted to drive consumers toward the declining home phone and cable television services.
The new Wideband Internet and Road Runner® Broadband Extreme service tier offerings are a part of Time Warner Cable's rollout of the DOCSIS
DOCSIS
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-speed data transfer to an existing cable TV system...
3 upgrade in the following markets:
- Kansas City, MO
- New York region
- Southwest Ohio region (select Cincinnati markets with a competing Cincinnati Bell FiOptics Internet coverage)
- Dayton, OH
- Charlotte, NC (began offering Road Runner Extreme and Wideband Internet as of November 2, 2010)
- Austin, TX
- Dallas, TX
- San Antonio, TX
- Raleigh, NC (offering Extreme and Wideband)
- Greensboro, NC (offering Extreme and Wideband)
- Columbus, OH and the surrounding areas
Bandwidth caps
Despite raising prices of its internet service within the last year, Time Warner Cable announced in February 2009 that it would expand its bandwidth caps and overage fees into four additional markets by the end of the year.On April 1, 2009, the cities to have metered billing were announced. In addition to Beaumont, Texas, the cities would be Rochester
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, NY,
Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
and San Antonio, TX and
Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina
Greensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city by population in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. According to the 2010 U.S...
, NC
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
.
These metered based billing plans were canceled according to Time Warner "due to customer misunderstanding"
Bandwidth is defined as a transfer rate measured in bits/second (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_(computing) (comparable to miles per hour), however bandwidth caps refer to the total amount of data transferred (comparable to miles traveled, usually per month).
Caps would range from 5 GB to 100GB with no unlimited option. The bandwidth will include downloads and uploads. If a user goes over, they will be charged $1 per additional gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
. Time Warner Cable announced they would provide a meter for users to monitor their usage. The new plan was set to begin in the summer of 2009, however due to protests they had decided against the bandwidth caps. Currently, users have unlimited bandwidth usage. Time Warner would have offered unlimited data for $150/month had the plan continued.
CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
Glenn Britt justified the new billing plans, claiming the infrastructures had to be continuously upgraded and users would pay for how much they use.
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
groups have been created in protest in addition to an online petition and a website dedicated to stop the movement. Other websites have been recently following the Time Warner cap plans that were already following broadband internet providers metering and capping plans,
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer and congressman Eric Massa
Eric Massa
-March to the Primaries:Freshman incumbent Randy Kuhl had been elected to Congress with slightly over 50% of the popular vote in a three way race in 2004. In early 2005, former U.S. Naval officer Eric J.J. Massa, a long-time friend of 2004 presidential candidate General Wesley Clark filed to run...
, both of whom represent portions of the Rochester, New York market that would be affected by the changes, announced their opposition to the plan and even went as far as to threaten legislation to ban such a scheme. On April 16, 2009, Time Warner abandoned the plan.
Road Runner Mobile
Like Comcast, Time Warner Cable is reselling Clearwire Mobile WiMax service and bundling it with the company's existing broadband, TV and VoIP services. Back in October, the company indicated that they'd be launching their incarnation of the service starting December 1 in Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte and Greensboro. Now, the company is indicating that they'll also be launching the service in Dallas starting December 1. Pricing for the "up to 6 Mbit/s" service ranges from $39.95 a month to $79.95 a month depending on you bundling options, and comes in three flavors:Road Runner Mobile 4G National Elite: gives customers unlimited access to both Time Warner Cable's 4G Mobile Network and Sprint's 3G EVDO network for $79.95 if you're a Roadrunner Standard or Turbo customer.
Road Runner Mobile 4G Elite: gives customers unlimited access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $49.95 if you're already a Roadrunner Standard or Turbo customer.
Road Runner Mobile 4G Choice: gives customers access to the Time Warner Cable 4G Mobile Network for $39.95 if you're already bundling at least two Time Warner Cable services. The tier also caps usage at 250 MB per month.
Users get additional discounts if they are triple play customers. According to Time Warner Cable, the company will be expanding the service into Honolulu and Maui later this year, and into San Antonio and Austin in early 2010.
Companies offering Road Runner
- AOLAOLAOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
broadband - Bright House NetworksBright House NetworksBright House Networks is a cable television company, the seventh largest cable operator and the sixth largest traditional multiple system operator in the United States owned by Advance/Newhouse, headquartered in Syracuse, New York...
- EarthlinkEarthLinkEarthLink , is an Internet service provider headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It claims 1.94 million subscribers.- Business :EarthLink provides a variety of Internet connection types, including dial-up, DSL, satellite, and cable. Both dial-up and high speed Internet access are available...
- Insight CommunicationsInsight CommunicationsInsight Communications is the 13th largest multiple system operator in the United States with approximately 692,000 customers in the three contiguous states of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio...
- New York Connect
- Time Warner CableTime Warner CableTime Warner Cable is an American cable television company that operates in 28 states and has 31 operating divisions...
MediaOne
MediaOne
MediaOne was a cable company created by US West in 1995 where the cable service started as a division of US West Media Group.US West founded MediaOne , through the combination of GCTV serving Atlanta, Georgia and Dekalb County, Georgia and Wometco Cable's assets in the suburbs of Georgia.In time...
was formerly the largest of Time Warner's Road Runner partners, leaving the agreement when taken over by AT&T Broadband (subsequently absorbed by Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
).
External links
- Official Site—Order information and support