Time Warner Telecom began inside a cable company. Time Warner Cable started the business in 1993, using fiber it had laid in cities to sell phone lines to businesses. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened local phone markets to competition, and the company rushed in. By the end of 1998 it ran networks in 19 metro areas, with 6,968 route miles of fiber. It sold dedicated lines, local and long distance calls, and data to big business customers.

Fiber Under the Cable

The company was a competitive local exchange carrier, a newcomer allowed to take on the old Bell phone companies. It used the Time Warner name and shared the cost of building fiber with its parent's cable systems. That gave it a head start in places where Time Warner already had cable. The bet was that businesses, phone carriers and internet providers would pay for fast, reliable lines that did not run through the local Bell.

Twenty Years to Level 3

Time Warner Telecom priced 18 million shares at $14 in May 1999, raising $252 million, and listed on Nasdaq as TWTC. It survived the telecom crash that sank many rivals. In 2008 it renamed itself tw telecom. Its fiber network kept growing through new builds and acquisitions. In 2014 Level 3 Communications bought tw telecom in a deal valued at about $7.3 billion, including debt.

Cover: N.W. Corner of Dearborn and Monroe Streets, Chicago, Showing the Post Office, Raoul Varin. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for city office buildings (metro business networks).