About Cable One

Cable One takes pride in making service delivery to its customers and communities its first priority by offering a same-day service guarantee for prompt action. It has been rated number one in customer service for the past three years by the National Cable Television Association. Cable One presently has a total subscriber base of more than 744,543 with 59 cable systems. As part of its system in Kirksville, MO, Cable One has implemented cable system services at the Truman State University located in this area.

The Challenge

College dormitory rooms at the Truman State University have a 100% turnover rate each year due to end of class schedules. Each fall, technicians from Cable One would have to work overtime for several weeks to physically connect the cable services ordered by the students living in the dorm rooms. At the end of each semester, this work would have to all be undone manually to disconnect the services. During the Christmas break, when students would go home for the holidays, services could not be disconnected because of the amount of work that it represented, causing dissatisfaction amongst Truman's student customers.

The Solution

To help reduce the great amount of overtime costs and the number of truck rolls it was experiencing from providing this type of seasonal service, Cable One chose to imple-ment Electroline's Addressable System in its Truman State University cable network. A 4-tier addressable system was installed, which includes more than 1,500 addressable taps operated through Cable One's billing system at its head-end. This system provides Cable One's customer service representatives (CSR) with a fast and simple solution for completing a customer transaction. Each customer account is linked to a house account containing the customer's street address and addressable tap address allowing the CSR to easily update customer information from this database.

The Addressable System Pay-Back

Addressability is an investment that provides an average 2-year pay-back and then keeps on providing returns for the long-term. Since the installation in the Summer of 1999, Cable One has already begun seeing incredible benefits. The addressable tap system has allowed for a considerable savings in labor costs resulting from truck roll reductions which are no longer necessary for simple connections and disconnections during the start and end of school terms.

"I am very impressed with the manpower hours and the truck rolls savings that the system has offered as well as its great efficiency that satisfies our customers. This first semester since we've installed Electroline's Adressable system has been, by far, the easiest fall college kickoff Cable One, Kirksville has ever experienced," said Joann King, General Manager at Cable One.

The Electroline Addressable System has offered Cable One many advantages by helping to improve its costs for the following operations:

• Better control of connections and disconnections:

  The Electroline Addressable System interfaces directly with Cable One's existing billing system. It facilitates the management of all connections and disconnections by controlling these operations remotely, from their main office.

• Improved costs of truck rolls and service calls:

Manual labor is no longer required to make disconnections in the Spring and connections again in the Fall. The addressable system has reduced the labor required by 90%. Overtime is no longer necessary because the work can be done within a normal work day and on time to provide the services ordered by the students.

• Improved service quality and cable choice flexibility:

  The Electroline Addressable System directly interfaces to Cable One's current billing system and helps provide improved service. Truman is now able to offer various programming choices such as premium channels with the installation of a 4-tier addressable system having traps. The system's 4 tiers of service offer students the 4 most popular combinations of channels. Cable One is also an Internet Service Provider, offering the students at Truman a combination of Internet and Cable TV service packages. This addressable system allows the University to offer reasonably priced and more attractive packages to its students, that can be ordered on site during enrollment. The University also has a few channels that are dedicated for student use to provide general information.

• Other advantages:

  Safety is a plus: Technical personnel no longer have to be exposed to hazardous conditions from going into the University's attics to make manual connections and disconnections.

"Speaking for my technical staff, I can say that I am optimistic and impressed with the performance so far and for the future. I fully expect this addressable system to offer an impressive pay-back with each school semester," explained Martin Stitzer, Technical Operations Manager at Cable One.

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.