Time Warner Cable said it has wrapped up its 2013 WiFi deployments with the installation of 500 hotspots in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
With that addition, TWC said it will close out the year with nearly 28,000 WiFi hotspots, growing its wireless broadband network by 160% since last year.
TWC also has WiFi deployments underway in Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California; Austin, Texas; Kansas City; Hawaii; Charlotte, N.C.; and New York City.
The MSO has not identified expansion cities for 2014, but noted that it expects to “add thousands of additional hotspots” next year, which should be music to the ears to TWC’s Wi-Fi gear suppliers --a group that includes Ruckus Wireless, Ericsson and Cisco Systems.
TWC’s WiFi network will also be freely accessible to cable modem subs who get service from other members of the MSO-backed “Cable WiFi” roaming alliance: Comcast, Cablevision Systems, Bright House Networks and Cox Communications. Together, those MSOs have collectively deployed more than 200,000 hotspots in cities such as Chicago; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Orlando; and Tampa.That number of is expected to grow to 500,000 and beyond. Comcast, meanwhile, has begun to turn residential DOCSIS-powered Wi-Fi gateways into quasi-public hotspots that emit a separate, authenticated "XfinityWiFi" SSID and service flow that are available to Comcast broadband subs who are on the go.
“We continued to build out our existing WiFi markets and add new markets to our WiFi footprint in 2013,” Mike Roudi, TWC’s SVP, corporate development, said in a statement. “In all, we more than doubled the number of hotspots offered on our network this year and saw tremendous growth in the amount of data consumed on our network”
The MSO has also redesigned its TWC WiFi Hotspot Sign In Portal, and recently added enhancements to the TWC WiFi Finder App, including a “Request a Hotspot” feature.
