Autobytel Speeds Toward Internet’s Fast-Access Future

With an eye toward the day when high-speed Internet access in homes becomes a reality, Irvine-based Autobytel.com last week said it received an investment from MediaOne Interactive Services Inc.

MediaOne, a division of the cable television company MediaOne Group Inc., has invested in a dozen other companies with broad-band content and technologies in mind, including Preview Travel (https://www.previewtravel.com), Golf.com (https://www.golf.com), SportsLine USA (https://www.sportsline.com) and Women.com (https://www.women.com).

“We’re attracted to companies that can really show off a broad-band network,” said Natalie Egleston, vice president of business development for Englewood, Colo.-based MediaOne Interactive.

MediaOne once had ambitions to develop its own content but has since spun off The Trip.com Inc., which runs the travel Web site https://www.thetrip.com, and abandoned its online city guides called DiveIn.

For Autobytel.com (https://www.autobytel.com), a broad-band future means delivering more information about cars using more complex graphics, multimedia and comparison features.

Development of a site enhanced for high-speed Internet connections should begin within the next two months. “We’d like to get something up and running by year end, definitely, and hopefully before that,” said Mark Lorimer, president and chief executive of Autobytel.com.

Terms of the investment by MediaOne were not disclosed.

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Jonathan Gaw covers technology and electronic commerce for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7818 and at [email protected].