Even though Time Warner Cable doesn’t have customers in Colorado, the state plays a key role in the company’s future.
That’s because a 100-employee research and development lab in Westminster creates the innovations to keep the nation’s No. 2 cable-television company competitive in an increasingly cutthroat marketplace.
Cable and telephone companies are scrambling to offer an integrated product that provides customers with high-speed Internet, TV, video and music downloads, personal photos and telephone calls using one platform, such as a television set, as the hookup.
Already, AT&T customers in San Antonio and Ohio can get Homezone – high-speed Internet and satellite-TV together in one box that sits on top of the customer’s television set. Verizon’s product in San Antonio is called FiOS, which stands for Fiber Optic Service.
Time Warner engineers in Westminster are working on their own version of a similar “digital living room” prototype, said John Callahan, senior vice president of Time Warner’s Advanced Technology Group-West.
“This is playing to our strengths as a cable company and connectivity to our broadband two-way network, which, essentially, the satellite guys don’t have,” Callahan said. “They have to work with a telco (telecommunications company) to stitch together a solution.”
Industry buzz has been growing about the new TV/Internet services, said Mike Schwartz, a spokesman at CableLabs in Louisville, a nonprofit cable operator research and development group.
“Maybe people don’t want to see (entertainment offerings) just on their computer screen,” he said. “So you can put (this) on a big TV set.”
Matthew Harrigan, a cable analyst at Greenwood Village-based Janco Partners, said the integrated delivery product will be the new battleground among cable, satellite and phone companies.
“Everybody has tried or has worked with these advanced media boxes,” Harrigan said. “This is expected to be a major differentiator.”
Time Warner Cable operates in New York, California and 25 other states, not including Colorado.
About 100 people work at the Advanced Technology Group-West office, on Church Ranch Boulevard. Time Warner Cable was formed in 1989 through the merger of Time Inc.’s cable television company, American Television and Communications Corp. in Denver and Warner Cable, a division of Warner Communications. Time Warner Cable later sold off its Western cable systems but maintained its Westminster office.
Time Warner’s engineers in Westminster also have created a box called “Startover,” which is being used by customers in South Carolina. “Startover” allows viewers to rewind to the beginning of a television show as long as the show is still in progress.
Other cable products and services under development in Westminster are under wraps for competitive reasons, Callahan said.
Time Warner is known for making sure things work before rolling out new products to consumers, said Bruce Leichtman, principal at Leichtman Research Group in Durham, N.H.
“Time Warner has been doing a lot of innovative things,” Leichtman said.
Staff writer Beth Potter can be reached at 303-820-1503 or bpotter@denverpost.com.
