MediaOne

MediaOne is a cable company that was founded in 1983 as one of the original Regional Bell Operating Companies. Founded under the Modification of Final Judgement (United States v. Western Electric Co., Inc. 552 Fed. Supp. 131), a case related to the antitrust breakup of AT&T, it began expansion into the cable television field, and by 1998, MediaOne's coverage area consisted of the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, and the Atlantic. The company's main headquarters is located in Denver, CO, with offices in Seattle, Omaha, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and New York City.

History
Until 1990, US WEST was a regional holding company that owned three Bell Operating Companies: The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company (or Mountain Bell, based in Denver, Colorado); Northwestern Bell, based in Omaha, Nebraska; and Pacific Northwest Bell, based in Seattle, Washington. It also had a directory publishing division,LANDMARK Publishing, which later became US WEST Direct. In 1988, the three companies began doing business under the US WEST Communications name. On January 1, 1991, Northwestern Bell and Pacific Northwest Bell were legally merged into Mountain Bell which was renamed US WEST Communications, Inc. US WEST was the first RBOC to consolidate its Bell Operating Companies (the other was BellSouth).

New Technologies
US WEST became a pioneer in the introduction and rapid system-wide implementation of telephone technologies designed by Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies) in the 1980s and 1990s. Their lead in this push became one that many other Regional Bell Operating Companies had to scramble to keep up with.

US WEST's success in this endeavor was for multiple reasons which included their then-innovative use of "test-markets" for staggered roll-outs of new calling features in middle-sized cities such as Boise, Idaho, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Phoenix, Arizona before releasing them on a wider scale. (They were the first communications provider to use this strategy called beta-testing, a term used for many years in the software development industry). Their geographic presence featured telephone switching equipment that had been constructed fairly recent to the time frame, thereby requiring fewer upgrades. Their service area was also experiencing population growth at a tremendous rate, tripling their subscriber-base in a short time and increasing revenues.

As a result of its rapid "bring-to-market" abilities and continued success in the advances in technology, the company quickly adopted a new slogan— "Life's better here."

Expansion to cable
In order to segregate its regulated telephone service from its unregulated cable TV businesses, US WEST separated their assets and businesses into two groups named US WEST Communications Group and US WEST Media Group and issued to its shareholders separate shares for the Media Group. Although both were part of the same corporation, the shares of each group reflected and tracked the results and prospects of the group's business, and could be traded separately. The Media Group's ticker symbol was "UMG" while communications group continued with the "USW" ticker.

In 1995, the Cable Modem service was later renamed to MediaOne Express. After completion of that deal, the company completed a co-branding deal with Time Warner's cable modem Internet business under which MediaOne would become MediaOne RoadRunner. In 2000, US WEST officially changed the name of their company to MediaOne and began expanding their coverage area. By 2010, MediaOne's coverage area expanded to include:
 * The Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and Utah)
 * The Southeast (Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida)
 * The Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, and Michigan)
 * The Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, Maine, Delaware, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and South Carolina)