Qwest Communications International Inc. and cable modem consortium Road Runner Wednesday sealed a three-year, $10 million high-speed data pact.
Road Runner will gain access to Qwest’s nationwide fiber optic backbone. Qwest will also provide Road Runner with flexibly-priced bandwidth at speeds of up to OC-48, or 2.4 gigabits a second. Qwest will also deploy the bandwidth.
Road Runner will use the new bandwidth for its service offering which provides consumers and small businesses with broadband data services through the Qwest network.
“Like Qwest, Road Runner is experiencing an enormous amount of growth and as its customer base continues to rapidly expand, it must have the necessary bandwidth for advanced data and Internet applications,” said Shaun Gilmore, Qwest’s senior vice president of national accounts.
Stephen Van Beaver, Road Runner’s senior vice president of operations, said Qwest was chosen for its proven reliability.
“Qwest is our backbone provider of choice because the high-speed, technologically advanced nature of the Qwest network, combined with our cable modem technology, provides our customers with one of the fastest, most reliable end-to-end connections available to residential and small-business customers today,” he said.
Road Runner, a joint venture between Time Warner, MediaOne Group, Microsoft Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Advance/Newhouse, serves more than 180,000 customers across the United States.