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It shares the same name, but not necessarily the same fate.
The pending merger of Time Warner Inc. and America Online Inc. will not be a major issue for subsidiary Time Warner Telecom, according to Michael Rouleau, senior vice president of marketing for the competitive telecommunications company.
Time Warner Telecom put some distance between itself and its parent company with an IPO last May. For all intents and purposes, it operates as a separate business, Rouleau says.
"The AOL-Time Warner merger really doesn't affect us," he says. "Time Warner is our single biggest shareholder-they have 48 percent of the shares. We don't even like to refer to them as a parent. They are our biggest shareholder.
"But we are focused on the communications business so we don't really see that merger impacting us a lot. Now, that being said, there may be opportunities down the road, but we'll let them get through their merger first."
A merger that will have far greater impact is Time Warner Telecom's recent acquisition of bankrupt GST Telecommunications Inc., another fiber-based broadband carrier serving the Pacific Northwest region. That will extend the footprint by 15 markets and add a second network operating center. Time Warner Telecom is in the process of integrating the two operations, which overlapped in only two markets.
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