About Time Warner Cable

Time Warner Cable, a division of Time Warner Entertainment, is the nation's most technologically advanced cable operator. Its cable systems are also the world's best clustered, with 86% of its more than 13 million customers in systems of 100,000 subscribers or more, adding up to a total of 21.3 million homes passed. Time Warner Cable has upgraded approximately 85% of its cable plant. An aggressive national rollout of the first phase of Time Warner Cable's new digital cable service began in 1999.

Telecommunications Infrastructure and Customer Support
The Company's infrastructure has expanded since its modest beginnings in 1966, when trunk lines ran under several avenues in the southern half of Manhattan.

Through two recent system-wide upgrades, Time Warner Cable has strategically placed technical facilities including four headends and 17 distribution hubs throughout its four boroughs. Today, the system's architecture offers a dramatic increase in bandwidth with exponentially increased reliability. With the massive infusion of fiber optic technology, the company provides a myriad of services customized for cable viewers, whether in hotels, businesses and homes including Road Runner, the company's high-speed online Internet service, and DTV.

The Challenge

This system was originally built using passive taps to connect subscriber drops to cable services. This approach required a technician to be dispatched to the home to disconnect the subscriber. Because portions of the New York City system had been built with the aerial plant in rear easements where homes are completely enclosed in row-housing, technicians did not have any way of servicing the cable management equipment unless they gained access by going through a subscriber's premise. This particular set up made connecting and especially disconnecting difficult and allowed unsubscribed homes to steal signals using the illegally accessed signal with a "descrambler" to obtain free cable service.

In 1997, Time Warner's analysis results indicated that subscriber penetration was less than 40% of total homes passed. Since management already had plans to rebuild the cable system due to franchise requirements and to pave the way for additional services, Time Warner saw this as an opportunity to install new equipment to correct the signal theft problem. This rebuild would allow the system to counter its loss of revenues associated with signal theft and help control it remotely while maintaining its network's integrity.

The Solution

Time Warner Cable of NYC had been aware of Electroline's Addressable Tap System successes with other Time Warner installations such as at its Mount Vernon system where Electroline's addressable taps were initially deployed in government housing MDU's (Multiple Dwelling Units). In addition to attaining the system average in subscriber penetration with that installation, the equipment demonstrated exceptional reliability. This was a key deciding factor in Time Warner of NYC's decision to use Electroline's Addressable Tap System for its rebuild project.

Electroline's addressable taps are remotely controlled to make instant connections/disconnections of cable drops. This remote switching capability has changed the way the Brooklyn/Queens portion of the Time Warner Cable of NYC system operates. It has allowed for a substantial reduction in its truck rolls, which are no longer required to perform most connections/disconnections. In addition, its ability to tightly control each subscriber connection has also resulted in a significant number of conversions of unauthorized connections into paying subscribers.

In addition to the network rebuild, Time Warner Cable of NYC planned to do an extensive audit of the drops while the system was being upgraded and passive taps were being changed into addressable taps. In the audit process, the physical address (the street address) of the tap port was cross-referenced with the electronic address of that tap. It was then entered into the system's billing system computer to provide a seamless relationship between the customer service representative's keystroke and a subscriber's connection. This process took place over an 18-month period with three quarters of it occurring in the last seven months ending in April 2000.

The Installation
The installation of the Addressable Tap System was initiated during the Autumn of 1998 when the limited access portions of the New York City system was being rebuilt. The entire installation in this portion of Time Warner Cable of NYC was for 125,000 passings of which the first 25,717 of those ports has been installed and is complete. The remainder of the installation is scheduled for completion by 2001.

In this system, Time Warner chose to install Electroline's SuperTap series of outdoor addressable multi-taps using two, four, and eight port tap configurations, supporting remote on/off control of service.

The SuperTap addressable tap was chosen for its many operational capabilities; one, in particular, is its unique directional coupler design that allows the system to maintain uninterrupted power and signal downstream if the tap plate is removed.

The addressable taps have been installed in areas where the distribution plant was in the rear yards in an urban environment to solve the problem of managing connections/disconnections in the difficult access areas (see Diagram 1).

Other components of the addressable tap system that have been implemented include the Electroline Control Unit IV which is a powerful headend microcomputer that controls the status of the SuperTaps located in the field. The Control Unit IV receives subscriber status from the cable billing system (or any host computer located at the system's headend) and continuously transmits the information to the SuperTaps using a robust dual FSK RF control carrier (see Diagram 1).

Diagram 1: Sample Layout of Time Warner Cable of NYC's portion that is deploying Electroline's Addressable Tap System

Service & Support
Electroline's support team assisted in every step of the installation, on site, from the planning to the deployment stages of the project. The team implemented a unique bar coding system that allows the electronic address of the SuperTaps to be automatically entered into Time Warner of NYC's billing system using a bar code reader. The support team also provides training to the cable system's personnel to educate them on operating and interfacing addressable taps with the addressable Control Unit IV and the cable data billing system.

Results: Signal Theft Reduction / Improved Subscriber Count

Almost immediately after the Addressable Tap System was deployed, the implementation began demonstrating an increase in subscriber count. Results were obtained from an analysis that was done on 25,717 addressable tap passings. Before installation of the Electroline Addressable Tap System, this portion of the cable system's penetration was 35.8%. After implementation, an analysis was done over an 18-month period. The results demonstrated that subscriber count increased to 42.1%, which translates into a 17.59% increase in subscriber count (42.1% - 35.8% = 6.3% ÷ 35.8% = 17.59%) (see Chart A & Chart B). These impressive results were mostly attained from the conversion of signal thieves to paying subscribers.

The Ongoing Benefits

Since the installation in the Summer of 1998, Time Warner Cable of NYC has seen incredible improvements in subscriber count and operational cost reductions.

• Better Control of Connections/Disconnections:

  The Electroline Addressable System conveniently interfaces directly with Time Warner's billing system. This facilitates the management of all connections and disconnections especially beneficial for disconnecting delinquent accounts instantly. In addition, the system's remote control from the main office no longer necessitates that the operator sends a truck out to do the same work, saving between $60 to $100 per truck roll.

• Improved Financial Performance:

The conversion of unauthorized connections to paying subscribers is only one aspect of this system's improved financial performance. When considering the increase in system value and the opportunity that each new subscriber represents as a candidate for the latest digital service, the impact on this system's financial performance is significant. This is obvious when doing a comparison of the investment cost of the Addressable Tap System deployment vs. its return on investment:

• Addressable Tap System Investment Cost: Cost of 25,717 addressable passings = $700,000
• Return on Investment - Impact on Cable System's Value: Approximate increase in subscriber count @ a value of $4,000 per subscriber = $6,500,000