Mr. Holt: It's pronounced Knology, silent "k" and "nology," which was a word that was derived from combining the words knowledge and technology. The company really got started in the 1993-1994 time frame. Cam Lanier, who is the Founder of the business, had a vision for a triple-play broadband voice, video and data company to compete with the big cable companies and the big telcos. As part of that strategy, he also wanted to compete in secondary and tertiary markets. We chose not to compete in the biggest metropolitan areas because he believed that in time, those big metropolitan areas were going to be the most competitive areas. The belief was that the big cable and telco companies would upgrade their networks and roll out new products and services in big markets before it would ever trickle down into the second-tier markets. When I say secondary and tertiary, I don't necessarily mean rural, I just mean not the Tier 1 markets. The history of our company really dates back to 1993 or 1994, as far as the founding of Knology. However, our telephone heritage dates back about 115 years. We actually merged Cam's family telephone business, which was a local telephone business in our headquarter town of West Point, Ga., into Knology in 1999. From an overview perspective, we now operate in 12 markets. Ten of the markets are in the southeastern U.S. and two markets are in the Upper Midwest, in the South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa regions. As I said earlier, we're completely focused on secondary and tertiary markets, and that niche has worked very, very well for us. We're providing cable TV, high-speed Internet, and local and long-distance telephone services to both the residential community as well as the small-business customers.
Tickers included in this excerpt: KNOL
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