MediaOne makeover, U S West takes the cable out of Continental

U S West Media Group whisked the cloth from its new image for Continental Cablevision last week, positioning itself as a broadband services provider that just happens to use coax as a medium.

From this point forward, the country's third largest cable operator will be known as MediaOne, a name that U S West first developed for its cable systems in the Atlanta area in 1995 (Telephony, April 21, page 6).

U S West also re-dubbed the multiple systems operator's high-speed cable modem service; the service formerly known as Highway1 will now be called MediaOne Express.

MediaOne also kicked off a major advertising campaign and announced it will expand its cable modem service to the Chicago market.

The new name -- and the hoopla surrounding it -- marks U S West's efforts to reposition its cable properties, said Richard Levine, principal in the communications industry consulting practice at A.T. Kearney. "U S West is trying to project an image of a provider of broadband services beyond mere cable TV," Levine said.

The MediaOne name positions the company as the primary provider in the market without getting too technology-specific, he said.

"Continental always had a good reputation, but [U S West] wanted to convey the image of something more than just the cable company," Levine said. "What that means remains to be seen.

Continental had reportedly spent several hundred thousand dollars on consultants to develop a new name before it was acquired by U S West last spring.

TI SELLS LMDS UNIT TO BOSCH Texas Instruments announced last week that it is selling its Multipoint Systems LMDS equipment division to Robert Bosch Gmbh of Germany for an undisclosed sum. Texas Instruments is instead focusing on the digital signaling processor market.

Upgrade leads to outage About 550 business and residential customers in Denver's Capitol Hill area lost phone service for as long as 14 hours last week. U S West was able to re-route about 28,000 calls. The outage was caused by a worker upgrading a central office.

Moving On Van Cullens will head the telecom division of Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla. James Zucco Jr. will step into his new post as president and chief operating officer of Shiva Corp. on May 19.