TWC Beefs Up NYC WiFi

Time Warner Cable said Monday that its WiFi footprint in New York City now spans more than 10,000 hotspots, an announcement that comes about ten months after the MSO said it was accerlating its buildout in the market.

TWC, which had about 1,700 WiFi hotspots deployed in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island as of last June, and then expanded to 3,000 in the region last summer said it is increasing density and expanding access to more parts of the city.

Recently launched areas include locations along West 47th Street in the Diamond District of NYC. TWC said it has “nearly doubled” its recreation and park WiFi deployments since last summer following deployments in Juniper Valley in Middle Village, Queens, Wolfe’s Pond Park in Staten Island, and the Metropolitan Recreation Center in  Brooklyn.

“With more than 10,000 active Hotspots now available, and thousands more coming this year, our customers can more readily find and connect to free TWC WiFi no matter where they are in the City,” John Quigley, regional VP of operations for TWC, said in a release.

TWC said nearly all of its 10,000 WiFi hotspots in NYC offer access to its new “TWCWiFi-Passpoint” SSID, which provides a higher level of security and the ability to do seamless handoffs between hotspots when users of qualified WiFi-capable devices are in broadcast range.

Time Warner Cable has added that technology to most of the 33,000-plus hotspots deployed in New York, southern California, Austin, Charlotte, Kansas City, Myrtle Beach and Hawaii.

TWC is also part of the “CableWiFi” roaming alliance, which has collectively deployed more than 200,000 hotspots. Other members include Comcast, Bright House Networks, Cablevision Systems, and Cox Communications.