Names Count

MONTEREY, CA — You’ve probably heard of Sunflower Broadband. It’s based in Lawrence, Kansas. The independent operator serves about 34,000 subscribers in the northeast part of the state. Its general manager, Patrick Knorr, is chairman of the board of the American Cable Association.

You may never have heard of Sunburn Communications. It got its first and only cable franchise (to date) last year. It’s in a small town of about 2,000 folks in eastern North Carolina. So far, J.C. Singleton, the founder has wired up about 80 of the 1,200 households in the market.

The origin of the “self-financed” company’s name?

“My wife came up with it,” he said, by telephone during the Independent Show here. Something to do with her husband’s proclivity to burn in the sun; and the location of Belhaven on the Inner Banks of the Carolina coast.

This is a nation of 1,100 independent operators, serving 8 million cable subscribers. Put together, that makes the ACA’s members one of the nation’s largest sources of cable services. Yet no one would mistake any one of them for Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox or Cablevision.

But they are the names that count in the towns where they operate. Those names mean something.

Jet Broadband, which operates in Pineville, W. Va., sounds like it chose to depict itself as the home of speed in Internet access and other communication services. And, leveraging that name, it sells packages of services under names such as Mach One and Mach Two.

That wasn’t the origin of the name, though. Its founders work out of Stamford, CT. And the company wanted to draw on JetBlue Airways’ reputation for great customer service, said Dan Nofs, its vice president of engineering and one of those founders. Now, JetBlue had a well-chronicled meltdown at Valentine’s Day, where it pretty much failed to show its customers any love.

But origins don’t necessarily reflect what companies now mean to their communities. Take Comporium, based in Rock Hill, S.C. Doesn’t even sound like a cable company. Take “communications” and “emporium” and you have one of those names that sounds generated by computer.

It’s slogan is “making life easier.” And it has a history that spans cable, telephony and radio. And transportation. The original name? Rock Hill Buggy Co., a century or more ago. Today, it’s a company that offers a “quintuple play”: TV, voice, wireless, Internet and home security services.

Look far enough and you’ll find cable companies trying to catch the Wave (Wave Broadband, Kirkland, WA); and, the New Wave (NewWave Communications, Somerset, KY). Besides Sunburn, there’s a Windbreak (Windbreak Cable, Gering, NE); and a Windstream (Windstream, Baldwin, GA). Even showing up at the Independent Show are Paul Bunyan Telephone (Bemidji, Minn.); and Venus Telephone (Venus, Pa.). Personal favorite: Spillway Communications (Maringouin, La.).

In these markets, though, the touch, the brand, the name matter. As Rex Skiles, the general manager of Eagle Broadband in Hays, KS, some of the push pins on its map of rural areas only represent five customers.

But each has a name. And each counts.