Beaver Valley Cable in Rome, Pennsylvania has a lot to be proud of according to Joe Ross, one of the engineers, and the technical advisor of this small cable broadband and video company located in the northeastern part of the state. According to Ross, Beaver Valley is one of very few cable companies that was able to turn off all their video QAMs and deliver IPTV over DOCSIS.
Beaver Valley is a family owned cable company that was started in the late 70’s by Doug and Nancy Soden, and currently managed by family members Bonnie Gray and Tad Soden. Across rural America there is still a demographic where broadband is not important to them, and the company founders felt that being just a broadband company would be a disservice to their community, prompting the decision to upgrade the Beaver Valley video cable system.
Small Staff and Small Budget Challenges
The challenge for the Beaver Valley team was to get their cable system to DOCSIS 3.0, to remove the legacy video off of their QAMs, and then utilize them for bandwidth to deliver IP video. For Beaver Valley the most economical way to upgrade their video was to take advantage of as much of their existing video infrastructure as possible and to make improvements incrementally. The Innovative Systems MG-TV is a perfect fit for Beaver Valley as they wanted to maximize their multicast delivery now by putting IPTV into their QAMs, and down the road having the option to add HLS OTT.
With the help of the Innovative Systems Video solution, our team was able to flip the switch from legacy cable to IPTV in one night.
Joe Ross – Beaver Valley Cable – PA
What makes this story even more interesting is at the same time the world was thrown into the grips of the pandemic. Ross says having their rock solid DOCSIS 3.0 network in place helped to withstand a skyrocket in Beaver Valley’s broadband usage, allowing them to maintain 100Mb internet, and IPTV on the same system.
The back office tools provided by the Innovative Systems video solution lets Beaver Valley know about issues that the customer may experience even before they know it themselves. Ross firmly believes that the goal should be to avoid giving the customer a reason to call you, because they may call your competitor instead. Small companies like Beaver Valley Cable with legacy video QAMs can cost effectively make the transition to IPTV. According to Ross, a twenty-year veteran of the cable industry who has served in engineering positions at Comcast, and Mediacom, making baby steps with existing cable equipment can keep companies like Beaver Valley Cable in the video business.
