September 25, 2006

Chiddix Recalls

By Mike Robuck, Communications Technology

Last week we ran an item about Time Warner Cable's Road Runner broadband service turning 10 this month, but to steal a line from Paul Harvey: “And now for the rest of the story ….”

Carl Rossetti, Jim Chiddix, Mario Vecchi and Tim Evard met for dinner in Evergreen, CO, on Jan. 25, 1995, to plot out the service on one piece of paper. Here’s how Chiddix remembers the event via an email.

"The dinner at my home in Evergreen was one of the very early discussions at Time Warner Cable about our entry into the high-speed data business,” said Chiddix, who moved on from TWC to become OpenTV’s chairman and CEO. “Mario Vecchi had just joined my engineering team from his post at CableLabs, Tim Evard had been the company's senior marketing executive, and Carl Rossetti was responsible for new business development.”

With all of the right ingredients in place at the dinner, Chiddix and his guests began brainstorming on the service that evening.

“Tim was an early and passionate believer in the potential of the Internet, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Mario is one of the best engineers I'd ever met, and he began fleshing out the architectural issues, which would have to be met. Carl smelled a new source of revenue, though I doubt he had inkling how big it would become. From that point, there was no turning back."

Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner Service officially launched on Sept. 10, 1996, in Akron, OH.  The company had initially tested the service in 1995 in Elmira, NY, and after the formal launch, rolled out the service to its customers nationwide over the next two years.

Today, more than 5.4 million households are the beneficiaries of that night’s discussion.

Mike Robuck