The Time Warner Inc. (TWX) subsidiary added 180,000 new customers during the first quarter. RoadRunner's current subscriber base surpasses more than 730,000 clients of the 15.6 million homes its coax passes in the U.S.

Bill Gordon, RoadRunner president, said its growth continues to accelerate in all markets.

"The growth is attributable to the addition of new markets to our footprint, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul, Waco, Texas and Western Ohio, and to increased penetration in existing neighborhoods," Gordon said. "Time Warner's Portland, Me. cable operation continues to boast the highest market penetration, approaching 25 percent franchise-wide."

Other communities such as Binghamton, N.Y. and Newfoundland, Canada have passed 10 percent market penetration. RoadRunner's San Diego operation reported nearly 14 percent market penetration on the year.

At the end of November, 1999 RoadRunner reported that it served 420,000 cable Internet access subscribers, which translates into 130,000 subscribers added to its base during the third quarter of last year.

If RoadRunner manages to fulfill its 1 million-subscriber prediction, it will have to add 270,000 new customers to its cable access line-up, or nearly as many subscribers as it added in the past two quarters combined. One thing that may help it reach that goal is the service's ongoing rollout in New York City. Currently, portions of Manhattan are already online with more scheduled to come by summer. Neighborhoods in the buroughs of Brooklyn and Queens will follow.

RoadRunner plans to accelerate its second quarter growth with scheduled service launches to Wilmington, N.C., Bakersfield, California and Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wis.

Excite@Home (ATHM) remains the largest cable Internet access provider in the U.S, reporting that its service is used by more than 1.1 million subscribers earlier this year.

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