Comcast founder Ralph Roberts dead at 95 [telecom]

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By Tali Arbel, AP Business Writer, CED, 06/19/2015

NEW YORK (AP) -- Ralph Roberts, who built Comcast from a small cable TV system in Mississippi into one of the nation's largest entertainment companies, has died. He was 95.

Comcast said in a statement that Roberts died Thursday night in Philadelphia of natural causes.

Roberts jumped into the fledgling cable TV industry in 1963 by spending $500,000 to buy American Cable Systems, a company in Tupelo, Miss. He then acquired other cable systems, changed the name of the company to Comcast and ran the company until he was in his 80s.

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