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Cable-industry veteran Ken Higgins has unveiled Frontline Solutions Inc., Redwood City, Calif., formerly known as The Backdoor Group, a company with a proven solution for helping MSOs dramatically reduce cable theft, a problem that costs the cable industry an estimated $6 billion per year in lost revenue (Source: National Cable Television Association).
Frontline Solutions' official unveiling at the 1998 NCTA trade show follows implementation of the company's tap-auditing software in a total of 14 MSO divisions nationwide, including Time-Warner, TCI and Intermedia systems in major U.S. cities. Four of these divisions have been utilizing Frontline's solution for more than a year, with all four divisions documenting dramatic drops in signal theft and an ROI between 300 to 500 percent in just 12 months. Higgins, a pioneer in launching HBO and other cable programming in the 1970s, notes that an additional 10 MSO divisions -- customers acquired by Frontline Solutions in the past six months -- are all positioned to achieve equally substantial results.
"This announcement comes at a time when the cable industry is in need of a real solution to a very real problem," said Ken Higgins, CEO, Frontline Solutions, Inc. "At present, there are roughly 17 million households in the U.S. with unauthorized cable connections. For cable operators who are serious about addressing this issue, we have developed a software solution that is market-tested and proven to deliver bottom-line results."
The Monitor Solution: How It Works
Frontline Solutions' software product, called The Monitor 2.2, provides cable operators with a simple yet effective method for auditing taps, the devices located on telephone poles that feed a cable signal into a household. Each tap installed in the field services approximately six households. In the past, operators had neither an effective nor an efficient means to track the cable connections flowing through their taps, making it easy for unauthorized viewers to steal cable.
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