Broadband Internet cable access provider Road Runner Tuesday announced its customer base had grown to more than
250,000 subscribers at the close of the first quarter.
“The popularity of the Road Runner service continues to grow faster than we
anticipated,” said Carl Rossetti, Road Runner’s interim chief executive officer.
Rossetti attributed Road Runner’s growth surge to higher weekly
installations of new services and decreasing churn rates among existing
subscribers.
According to Rossetti, “almost all of our first quarter growth is
attributable to increased penetration in the markets where we are deployed.
In the near future we will be launching several large new markets including
Cincinnati, Houston, Orlando and Richmond which will, of course, add
exponential growth”.
Road Runner’s largest group of subscribers is in the Northeast U.S. The Road Runner data and operations center located in Chelmsford,
Massachusettes serves approximately 124 towns in Massachusetts and New
Hampshire.
The Chelmsford data center currently provides broadband services to more than
50,000 subscribers with a penetration rate of 5.17 percent of the total
service area. Twenty-two of these communities have surpassed penetration
rates of 10 percent.
Portland, Maine continues to post the highest Road Runner penetration rate
of all homes passed by cable in a metropolitan area, capturing a reported
14.55 percent share.
Albany and Binghamton, N.Y. and San Diego, California Road
Runner service areas are reporting more than 5 percent market penetration of the
total homes passed by their respective cable networks.
Road Runner is currently available to approximately 8 million US homes.
Road Runner services will eventually be able to reach more than 30 million
cable homes nationwide, which is about 40 percent of the US cable market.
Road Runner is a joint venture owned by Time Warner Inc., MediaOne Group, Microsoft Corp., Compaq Corp. and Advance/Newhouse. Road
Runner’s reported subscriber base does not include MediaOne subscribers in
Chicago.
