Suddenlink FYI

Through the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), Suddenlink has joined other cable operators in a first-of-its-kind partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to help prevent the spread of child pornography online.

Together, the participating cable operators offer Internet service to 87% of U.S. homes, or approximately 112 million total homes.

From LegalNewsline:

NAAG President and Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch said the agreement “is notable as the first such agreement (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) has reached with an entire sector of the nation’s communications industry.

“The NCTA agreement with NCMEC will limit the ability of predators to store and exchange images of exploitation of those who are, by definition, among the more vulnerable in society. We congratulate the cable industry for taking a strong stand in support of child safety.”

For more information, see the NCTA news release distributed earlier today, and this Multichannel News report.

Suddenlink’s participation in this effort is one part of the company’s larger commitment to promoting Internet safety.

Ricardo Alvarado of Leesville, La., (picture above, on the left) is the grand-prize winner of Suddenlnk’s “Win a Home Upgrade” sweepstakes.

Alvarado was awarded his $25,000 grand-prize check yesterday afternoon.

In addition to Mr. Alvarado, Suddenlink has awarded hundreds of other sweepstakes prizes (including free phone, cable and Internet service, and free pay-per-view movies) to individuals throughout its service area.

From North Carolina to California, Suddenlink technical teams took home the silver and gold last week at the 25th annual confab of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE).

Out of the nearly 300 cable systems from 13 companies that received Gold Safety Awards, Suddenlink snagged 73. And out of the more than 50 systems from six companies securing Silver Safety Awards, Suddenlink again demonstrated its leadership, taking home 12.

Winners are listed here, alphabetically, first by company name, then by system name. Congrats to all.

Due to various circumstances, we will have very few if any new posts to share between now and the week of June 23. But don’t fear: We’ll be back to a more normal schedule later this month. In the meantime, we hope you’ll search this site for relevant content, or visit our main site to learn more about Suddenlink products and services.

Thanks.

In the first verse of the popular child’s song, which we appropriated for the title of this post, the next line is “clap your hands.” In this case, we’re obviously not writing for children, and thus our request is a little different.

Instead of clapping your hands, we hope that — if you’re happy with Suddenlink broadband services — you’ll share your opinion by writing a review of our services at Broadband Reports or BBR, a prominent online forum for discussing and rating Internet service providers.

Like our peers and competitiors, Suddenlink has a presence at BBR, and the picture painted there of our company has been steadily improving over the course of the last year. That positive trend is the direct result of several things:

1. We finished our customer-impacting transition work in 2007, work that was required as we created one company from pieces of three.

2. We made a series of improvements to our local and national networks, enhancing the reliability and download speeds of our Internet service

3. We upped the ante on training programs for front-line employees throughout the organization. As is usually the case, more and better training resulted in better service.

4. We improved the overall value of our services by making the “triple play” of TV, Internet, and phone — and the associated savings of bundling those services together — available to the overwhelming majority of customers.

Granted, we still have room for improvement. We cannot rest on our laurels. To the contrary: We can and must continue to focus on enhancing the customer experience. That said, we also know the trends are headed in the right direction, as evidenced by internal customer surveys and the net growth in our business over the last year.

Accordingly, if you’re one of the happy customers, we hope you’ll take time to contribute a review at BBR. Blank review forms can be found here. And it’ll only take about 10 minutes of your time.

Thanks for considering this request.

Sixty years ago, the cable industry was born, and while there is some argument over precisely where that birth occured, a recent Multichannel News story notes that “the first published account” can be traced to a Nov. 18, 1948 article in a Tuckerman, Ark. newspaper. Today, Tuckerman is served by Suddenlink’s Newport, Ark., cable system.

From the Multichannel story:

In Tuckerman, Ark., population 2,000, appliance store owner James Y. “Jimmy” Davidson, and his sole employee, Louis French built a 100-foot-high tower on top of a two-story building and ran a coaxial cable down to television sets in his appliance store, where he successfully received test broadcasts from WMCT-TV, which was located over 100 miles away in Memphis, Tenn.

After WMCT-TV began fulltime transmission on Jan. 1, 1949, Davidson began looking for other locations for community antennas. After completing a system in Batesville, he began building other systems in Arkansas, financing each from the revenue generated from the others.

Davidson also founded a company, Davco that supplied equipment and expertise for would-be cable operators in Arkansas and other southern states.

A quarter-century later, in 1974, Davco and Mr. Davidson provided a young man from Newport his first job in cable. Today, that young man is Suddenlink’s MidSouth Region Vice President Randy Goad.

Suddenlink has completed a 957-mile fiber-ring project in western Texas. This project will enable an expanded slate of high-definition channels, video on demand (VOD), and other new services. Development of the fiber-ring started in late 2007, took six months to complete, and is believed to have been the largest fiber-construction project anywhere in North America last year.

The ring connects Suddenlink cable systems in the Texas markets of Abilene, Amarillo, Andrews, Big Spring, Floydada, Lubbock, Midland, Plainview, Post, San Angelo, Snyder, Sweetwater and Tulia, as well as Clovis, N.M.

Benefits of the project include:

- Additional capacity for current and new services
- Faster, more-economical deployment of new services
- Improved service quality
- Enhanced network redundancy to improve reliability

As a result of this project, Suddenlink has already added several new high-definition (HD) channels to line ups in the Abilene, Amarillo, Lubbock, Midland, and San Angelo cable systems, including: MHD (which features music programming from MTV, VH1, and CMT), TBS HD (home to Major League Baseball games on Sundays and the exclusive network for the four MLB Division Series and the American League Championship Series), and History Channel HD.

Though the company has been around since February 2003, the Suddenlink name was first announced in early May 2006 — around the same time we closed the acquisition of approximately 900,000 customers from Cox Communications, followed in July by the acquisition of approximately 240,000 customers from Charter Communications.

In those two years, Suddenlink has (among other things) migrated all operations to a common billing platform, dramatically expanded the availability of phone service, double or tripled Internet speeds in most areas, grown its customer base, and — most importantly of all — improved its performance in customer care.

There’s certainly more work to be done, but all Suddenlink employees can (and should) take great pride in what they’ve accomplished so far.

Happy second anniversary.