Cable customers in the southern part of Leavenworth County might see a new name on their bill soon.
On Tuesday, The Leavenworth County Commission approved an agreement that will allow Sunflower Broadband, currently the Lawrence-based cable service provider for several hundred customers in the southern portion of the county and many more in the Eudora, Lawrence and Douglas County markets, to transfer franchise authority on the county’s cable infrastructure to Knology, a Georgia company that acquired Sunflower in August.
Utility companies enter franchise agreements and pay annual fees for the authority to use lines that are built in publicly owned right of way.
The transfer is largely a technical requirement of the sale of Sunflower to Knology. Patrick Knorr, chief operating officer for Sunflower Broadband, said the sale is expected to be complete by the end of the year.
Sunflower Broadband started in the mid-1990s as a phone company, and Knorr said it serves as a “competitive provider” to larger companies like Time-Warner and Comcast.
From a customer’s standpoint, Knorr said Knology has no plans to alter the operations or service that Sunflower currently offers, though some positions will be consolidated. The customer service phone number will remain the same and he said the company plans to retain stateside call centers in South Dakota and Georgia and keep some of the operations in Lawrence, having identified the area as a “regional hub site.”
Commissioner Clyde Graeber asked what area Sunflower currently covers. He said he has heard from some residents in unincorporated northern portions of the county about difficulty in getting cable service.
“Not the immediate area, in the north,” Knorr said of the company’s current coverage. “Now that may change — one of Knology’s plan is to expand a little bit more.”
That includes plans to triple or quadruple the size of Sunflower’s current subscriber base, though he said he did not know how north the service would be expanded.
Commission John Flower said he supported the transfer, based on previous experiences he has had with Sunflower Broadband. However, he said he hopes that continues to be the case.
“There is no reason to fix what ain’t broken,” Flower said.
