The Sunflower Cablevision Success Story is available in PDF.
Click here to download.

About Sunflower Cablevision

Founded in 1970, Sunflower Cablevision, a privately owned cable services company, is a subsidiary of The World Company which also owns the Lawrence Journal World, the Steamboat Pilot, the Baldwin City Signal, and eight other local newspapers in the midwest and southwest.

Sunflower offers analog and digital video services to Lawrence and the surrounding communities, as well as residential and business Internet access through Datavision, an independent provider owned and operated by Sunflower. With 31,000 total subscribers, this MSO is based in and around the University of Kansas, where it provides approximately 25% of its cable and Internet services to the students residing in the area during the fall and winter sessions.

The Solution

To help maintain a reliable network and to improve its profitability, Sunflower chose to implement both Electroline's Addressable System and its CLEARPath ingress management modules.

To decrease the number of truck rolls, a single tier addressable system was implemented using Electroline's addressable SuperTap™ for single family units and its addressable CAT™ units forMDU applications.

Through Electroline's Control Unit located at the head end, the addressable taps and the CAT units are remotely switched to either the "ON" or "OFF" position, depending on the subscriber's status. This one-tier addressable system allows Sunflower to considerably reduce the number of truck rolls and technicians required for such simple operations. Manual labor is no longer required to make disconnections in the Spring and connections again in the Fall. Now, when students migrate to and from their apartment complexes each semester, the Company can manage the workload without creating a back log of service orders by providing instantaneous service to its customers. With the addressable taps installed in various MDU buildings surrounding the University, the cost of truck rolls and on-site service calls have considerably improved. For instance, Sunflower is now capable of servicing over 1,000 installations in one month, in a University town, without rolling a truck.

Using the same Control Unit and a spectrum analyzer at the head end, Sunflower can also quickly locate and manage the ingress that occurs within its return path. These two units work together with some 200 CLEARPath™ modules (CPMs) installed within its coaxial distribution network, to perform extensive testing of the return path. This set-up allows the Company to detect and locate the exact location of the ingress out in the field. For instance, if ingress is detected at the head end, using one of the CPMs, a technician can perform further testing using a 6 dB pad to isolate the ingress. A technician can then be dispatched and sent into the field to correct the problem.

"It is a money-making system. We installed 300 addressable outlets in an apartment complex a few years ago and today, those units alone, have paid for themselves. Now, they purely generate revenues for us. Especially in the cases where the churn is 1200 outlets in one week, each outlet has been paid for. We are now completely generating revenues by providing cable services through remote connections," explained James Risner, Director of Engineering at Sunflower Cablevision. "We're a small system and when a new MDU goes up, we automatically install addressable taps because we know that the benefits will definitely be larger than the cost of the installation."

The Ongoing Benefits

Sunflower is in the process of completing the installation of a 100 node, 750 MHz HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) network. With this upgrade, the CPMs will play a different, yet important role where the technician, located at the head end, will monitor each one of the 100 nodes to determine if ingress is present. If ingress is detected, the technician is able to switch each CPM module located further into the distribution plant to find exactly which leg is affected by ingress.

The CPMs have improved the Company's response to solving ingress locating problems. This method provides a proactive approach that has allowed for the creation of a reliable return path with its convenient troubleshooting capabilities, helping maintain the Company's subscriber satisfaction.

Since 1993, Sunflower has installed over 6000 addressable outlets (an installation of another 3000 outlets is planned for the year 2000). These units have been extremely beneficial in its MDU applications where revenues have improved through an 80% reduction in truck rolls.

Another way to look at it:

Overall impact of implementing addressable equipment on Sunflower Cablevision's revenues:

Revenue source:     6000 service changes on addressable taps per year
Cost per truck roll:   $50.00

Truck Roll Savings:  $300,000 per year

This translates into a great savings solution for Sunflower Cablevision as revenues are generated sooner and customers are serviced faster.