Archive for September, 2008
Mountain Home, AR
In February 2007, American City BusinessJournals ranked Mountain Home eleventh on their list of the top 100 U.S. retirement locations . In January 2008, Field & Stream ranked the community second on its list of the 20 best “fishing towns in America.” Three months later, Outdoor Life ranked Mountain Home first on its list of the 200 “best places to live.”
These accolades are no surprise to the locals, who are well versed in the area’s natural wonders. Sitting twelve miles due south of the Arkansas-Missouri border, Mountain Home’s slogan is “Three Rivers, Two Lakes, One Beautiful Life.” The rivers include White, North Fork, and Buffalo National. The two lakes are Bull Shoals and Norfork. And that’s not all. Mountain Home is also within easy driving distance of two national forests: Mark Twain and Ozark.
These outdoor recreation opportunities – plus the community’s affordable cost of living – have contributed to its steady growth during the last forty years (from a population of roughly 2,000 in the late 1960’s to more than 12,000 today) – and to its popularity among retirees from Illinois, Wisconsin, California and the east coast.
A Few Changes
First, we reorganized certain subjects of frequent interest under one heading, “Hot Topics.” You should see the link to that page on the navigation bar near the top of the blog. Go to that page and you’ll find links for additional pages on the NFL Network, HDTV, Digital Broadcast Transition, and Suddenlink’s pledge to customers during “retransmission consent negotiations.”
Second, we added a page for “States,” also accessible via the navigation bar near the top of the blog. That page is where we’ll eventually link to information on our operations in the eight states where most of our customers live and work. A page on Suddenlink-West Virginia is already available, and we expect to add pages for the others in the not-too-distant future.
Almost There
Raymond Mills, VP/Engineering for Suddenlink’s Texoma Region, reports that Conroe and Lake Conroe are now 90% online for Suddenlink services and Kingwood is approaching 70%.
All three of these cable systems have construction crews working plant and fiber repairs. As power comes up and technicians run trouble calls, additional outages have been identified, caused by “connector pull outs, defective/burned electronics, passive devices, etc.” — all typical issues in post-hurricane situations. Our trouble calls currently range from reconnecting a piece of equipment to repairing a broken line running from a customer’s home to the Suddenlink network.
Additional technicians are being deployed to the three noted systems today, to help run trouble calls through the end of next week. As more power comes up in the systems and repairs are made, we will add/adjust our workforce as required.
In Kingwood, approximately 60% of commercial power has now been restored. Generators continue to be moved around there and set in locations where we have customers with power to their homes and/or home generators, so we can provide signals to them.
Conroe and Lake Conroe are approaching 100% for commercial power, and most plant repairs should be completed by the weekend if not before.
Post-Ike Updates
Suddenlink repair crews made great progress over the weekend in Kingwood, Conroe, and Lake Conroe, the most severely damaged Suddenlink systems. Conroe and Lake Conroe are now at about 90 percent restored (i.e., 90 percent of customers should be able to receive Suddenlink service when electricity to their neighborhoods is restored). Kingwood is currently around 50 percent restored, with additional progress being made daily.
Suddenlink customer-care offices are open in all communities, except Lake Conroe. That office is expected to reopen Monday.
Suddenlink crews have used generators to provide power to conduct system tests and locate problems, even in the most severely damaged areas.
“Our people have done a great job finding creative ways to diagnose problems without having commercial power,” said Texoma Region Vice President Todd Cruthird. “Our tests showed yesterday that, if full commercial power had been restored, about 85 percent of our customers across all affected areas would have been able to receive Suddenlink service. Our crews have repaired hundreds of drops [connections from customer locations to the Suddenlink network], along with downed fiber and cable.”
Even with some power outages still affecting service, Suddenlink had restored service to about 95 percent of Lufkin customers, about 90 percent in Nacogdoches, and about 80 percent in Huntsville. On Wednesday and Thursday this week, crews repaired about 300 drops in Nacogdoches. Suddenlink is still powering some of its neighborhood nodes with generators until commercial power is fully restored.
In many of the hardest-hit areas, Suddenlink must wait for commercial power crews to complete their work before our crews can safely complete cable-system repairs.
Cruthird said he was proud of his team: “We’ve had a number of people tell us they appreciate the work by our staff, and in many cases, they’ve said our were the first trucks they saw in the affected areas.”
He also lauded employee efforts to help their team, gathering groceries, diapers, and other supplies to send to their colleagues and families in the hardest-hit areas.
Suddenlink has also provided cable services to shelters in East Texas.
Cruthird said that he expected Suddenlink would be ready to return to business as usual in all areas in the next five days, assuming commercial power needs are met.
As of last night, little had changed since mid-day yesterday, with the exception of Lufkin, where the estimated percentage of the community still without power was in the 40 to 50% range, down from 75% earlier in the day.
As we receive reports of continued progress by the power companies, we will provide additional updates on our progress. In the meantime, Suddenlink crews continue to do whatever they can to ensure that our services are available as soon as possible after power is restored.
Conroe: An estimated 100% of the community was without commercial power this morning. Physical assessment of fiber lines has been completed, with minimal damage identified. Physical assessment of non-fiber lines will continue and should be completed today.
Lake Conroe: As in neighboring Conroe, an estimated 100% of Suddenlink-served homes in Lake Conroe were without commercial power this morning. Physical assessments of damage are nearly complete, with approximately 30 locations identified so far where trees have fallen on fiber lines and are targeted for repair.
Kingwood: An estimated 90% of the community was without commercial power this morning. Suddenlink crews have completed their physical assessments of damage and identified several thousand feet of downed cable and fiber lines targeted for repair.
Huntsville: An estimated 80% of the community was without commercial power this morning. Suddenlink crews have completed their physical assessments of damage and identified several hundred feet of downed cable targeted for repair.
Lufkin: An estimated 75% of the community was without commercial power this morning. Suddenlink crews have completed approximately half of the physical assessment of damage and identified around 30 locations where strands are broken and targeted for repair.
Nacogdoches: An estimated 75% of the community was without commercial power this morning. Suddenlink crews have completed approximately three-fourths of the physical assessment of damage and identified several thousand feet of downed cable targeted for repair.
(Note: Most Suddenlink-served communities in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri were operating normally this morning. Much of the Ike-inflicted damage in those areas was repaired over the weekend. Of the few Suddenlink systems in these states that are still recovering, the remaining issues are generally related to loss of commercial power, including Hot Springs Village, Ark., where an estimated 30% of Suddenlink-served homes are still without commercial power.)
Damage-assessment work continues in most markets. We are finding some damage to our cable plant, and may continue to do so, but most issues are currently related to the lack of commercial power.
We continue to emphasize the need for our crews to keep safety top of mind as they proceed with their work, wherever they have been cleared by local authorities to initiate repairs.
Starting tomorrow, we should be in position to provide market-specific updates for the largest affected Suddenlink communities.
Physical assessments of the potential damage to cable lines are underway in many areas, though not all crews are yet able to begin these assessments.
Initial reports from local power companies indicate that their restoration work could take several days or even weeks before completed. Regardless, additional Suddenlink personnel are already moving toward the impacted areas, where allowed to do so, so they can be in position to initiate required cable repairs as soon as possible after power crews finish their work and provide a “green light” to our crews.
Given the breadth of the power outages — and the evolving nature of this storm — we will likely not be in position to provide (in this forum) timely, specific, market-by-market updates for at least 24 hours, pending local circumstances stabilizing and commercial power being restored more broadly. Please stay tuned.
In Louisana, several of the same communities impacted recently by Gustav are now cleaning up post-Ike. In Lake Charles specifically, Suddenlink crews report flooding and power outages. Very little of the cable plant (wires) were taken down by the storm. Similarly, power company representatives informed Suddenlink crews that relatively few utility poles were broken and that the power outages may be caused more by blown transformers than downed lines.
We will provide more details as we receive them, although there may be some delays in posting new information, given that our field personnel are rightly focused on crew safety and service restoration.
In the meantime, Suddenlink teams in east Texas and southwest Louisiana are actively preparing to help restore service, post-Ike, in coordination with local authorities and power crews.
Our best wishes, thoughts, and prayers go out to all who are in the storm’s path.
Stephens, Cordova Make ‘Most Influential’ List
Stephens, Senior Vice President of Commercial and Advertising Operations (CAO), ranked No. 35. CableFAX wrote: “Stephens leads Suddenlink’s CAO team, which has delivered double-digit growth for the last two years, winning new customers while developing customer segments and revenue streams. A strong influence within Suddenlink, where he’s got the ear of CEO Jerry Kent, Stephens is also influential in the wider world. He serves on several boards, including those for the Eltrex Corp., the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Business Services steering committee and the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (CAB). He is also a member of the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC).”
Cordova, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, ranked No. 48. CableFAX wrote: “Cordova leads a 115-person engineering team that handles all technical operations, voice and engineering functions. Under his leadership, Suddenlink has migrated more than a million new customers from Cox and Charter to the company’s own email and billing platforms, including the migration of 30,000 voice customers from one soft-switch to another. He is also a two-term Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) board member.”
Video on Demand to Launch in West Texas
Later this year, the new service should be expanded further to Andrews, Big Spring and Plainview, Texas, as well as Clovis, N.M.
Access to the VOD service will be enabled by a new interactive program guide, Macrovision’s i-Guide®, which Suddenlink is pre-loading on set-top boxes slated for delivery to new digital customers. The same guide will be deployed electronically to digital boxes that are already in customer homes.
Once enabled, Suddenlink’s VOD service will offer thousands of viewing choices, including movies, sports, news, music and shows from popular cable networks such as Nickelodeon, NOGGIN, MTV, Comedy Central and Discovery.
An expanded inventory of high-definition (HD) programming will be included in the mix. More than a third of the Suddenlink VOD library will be free. The rest will be available for either a per-view charge or monthly subscription.
VOD allows viewers to order the titles of their choice via remote-control, at any time, and have access to those titles for an extended period; typically, 24 hours. Viewers can also pause, rewind, and fast-forward their choices, much as they do with a VCR (video cassette recorder) or DVR (digital video recorder). In contrast, pay-per-view or PPV service offers a far more limited slate of programming than VOD and makes that programming available only at certain, pre-scheduled times.
“VOD service clearly puts more control in the customer’s hands,” said Dave Gilles, Suddenlink’s West Region vice president. “It lets them view all kinds of entertainment programming, when and how they want to see it.”
Suddenlink’s VOD library will be regularly updated, with about one-third of the inventory changing over each month to make fresh choices available to customers. VOD programs will be stored at a centralized server and delivered across the company’s new, West-Texas fiber ring, completed earlier this year.
Brief Hiatus
Ike Watch
Updates: Hanna & Gustav
“In addition to some single-home service calls, we have minor outages in a few neighborhoods, largely related to commercial power that we expect will be resolved before the end of the day,” Region Vice President Phil Ahlschlager reported in an email.
He added: “We’re still having a few rain showers, and wind is robust but decreasing, now around 15 to 20 mile per hours. There may be a few more downed lines and/or outages as the day goes on, but we should be able to respond quickly.”
Repairs also continue in the areas affected by Gustav earlier in the week.
Elsewhere, post-Gustav cleanup continues in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. Updates follow for the largest affected Suddenlink communities:
Alexandria, La. — The power company is making steady progress, and Suddenlink customers’ modems are coming back online. Our crews are close behind the power-company crews and will restore outages as quickly and efficiently as circumstances allow.
Bastrop, La. — Crews have identified two more spans of cable down in Mer Rouge. Repairs continue.
Jonesboro, La. — The larger generator (delivered from Conway, Ark.) was expected to be up and running at the “headend” facility this morning.
Hot Springs Village, Ark. — The situation steadily improves as power-company crews restore electricity. More than 65% of the cable system should be operational at this point, though there were still a number of areas without power last night.
Russellville, Ark. — Several generators are in place, feeding back-up power supplies. Suddenlink crews are working in tandem with power-company crews.
Greenville, Miss. — Nearly all of the cable plant is operational, with one subdivision still to be restored as of last night.
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Alexandria, La., remains the Suddenlink community hit hardest by Gustav. Repairs continue at a steady pace despite challenges securing gasoline and certain other supplies. On a positive note, flood waters in the area are receding.
Bastrop, La., was also badly hit, with some cable lines still on the ground this morning, though everything was expected to be operational today.
The Jonesboro, La., “headend” facility will likely be without commercial power for two weeks, pending the power company reaching its location. In the meantime, the facility is operating on generator power, with a larger generator scheduled for delivery from Conway, Ark., to keep the Jonesboro, La., headend up and running until commercial power can be restored.
Crews are making progress in Hot Springs Village, Ark. A major power company is bringing back crews (which had been sent to Louisiana) to help tackle an estimated 70,000 electric power outages in Arkansas, nearly 40 percent of which are thought to be in the Little Rock/Hot Springs Village area.
Russellville, Ark., is still operating some areas on generator power, but contractors were expected to be cleared for repairs this morning, with power-company crews already in the area making their repairs.
Greenville, Miss., is experiencing flooding and power outages. The city is under four feet of water and two employees’ homes have been flooded.
Other severely affected cable systems include LeCompte, Moreauville, New Iberia, St. Joseph, and Ville Platte, La.
The Alexandria cable system is the largest Suddenlink system incurring extensive damage from the storm. As of 12 p.m. CT today, an estimated three-quarters of Suddenlink customers in the Alexandria area were without commercial power. Generators have been deployed to maintain service in as many parts of the area as possible. The master control facility, or headend, continues to operate on generator power, although Suddenlink’s retail office in nearby Pineville was temporarily closed this morning due to flooding.
Suddenlink employees have installed cable service for the Red Cross Shelter at Alexandria’s Red River Coliseum.
Elsewhere this morning, central Louisiana systems in Winnfield, Boyce and Lecompte were still without commercial power and had suffered extensive damage. In Arkansas, extensive power outages in Hot Springs Village, Malvern and Russellville were affecting service.
A number of Suddenlink crews are on the ground now, with others on their way or available to assist, as circumstances require. These crews will work to restore service in affected areas as soon as commercial power is restored and local officials give them the go-ahead to start working.
Suddenlink began preparing to restore service well before Gustav struck the Louisiana coast, including contacting vendors to bring in extra cable, generators and equipment, and arranging for incremental staff to support the effort from nearby locations.
“Many of our people helped restore service after Hurricane Rita and they know the ropes,” said Randy Goad, a Suddenlink regional vice president with responsibility for the company’s operations in Louisiana. “After Rita, we accomplished business-as-usual service in about one-third of the time experts estimated.”
