YOU’VE GOT SYNERGY…FINALLY!

Five years after merging and ballyhooing synergy, AOL and Time Warner Cable have finally joined forces, forming a partnership to connect computer users to the Internet, rather than fighting for customers, as they’d done until yesterday.

Under the terms of the partnership, the two entities will team up wherever Time Warner Cable operates, with TWC providing high-speed connections through its Road Runner division and the AOL offering e-mail and content. That means AOL will pitch an upgrade to TWC’s high-speed connection to the 3 million or so dial-up subscribers living in Time Warner Cable territory.

The move is intended to help AOL stop the bleeding—the company has been losing dial-up customers to other high-speed services for some time now—while also increasing Time Warner Cable’s size and cachet to potential advertisers. AOL will hawk online advertising for both entities.

“This answers the question of what happens to AOL in a broadband world,” said AOL CEO Jonathan Miller.

The partnership kicks off this week in Raleigh, N.C., with other markets being added over the course of 2005.

“It is kind of remarkable that it took this long to put this deal together,” Jupiter’s David Card told the Washington Post.