Sunflower Broadband said it will deploy Advent Networks’ proprietary “Ultraband” platform as part of a plan to serve small- and medium-sized business subscribers at the University of Kansas’ Information and Telecommunication Technology Center (ITTC), where engineering students routinely evaluate new technologies.

Beyond that, Lawrence, Kansas-based Sunflower Broadband said it will tap Advent’s headend-based switch router and access gateway to serve those customers with dedicated access speeds of 5 to 40 megabits per second via its existing HFC network.

Sunflower said it expects to deploy the Ultraband platform in the second quarter of this year.

The Sunflower agreement marks the second deployment for Advent. Kansas City-based overbuilder Everest Connections, which competes in the market with incumbent MSO Time Warner Cable, is set to offer the platform this quarter. Everest is a subsidiary of UtiliCorp United, an Advent investor.

Moving well beyond the trial phase, Advent is preparing to ramp up its sales and marketing efforts, said Advent CEO Geoff Tudor.

Tudor added that Advent is also in discussions with larger MSOs, but declined to say with whom.

Though DOCSIS 1.1 technology can serve residences and small-office/home-office customers, “when you get into LAN-type services and you’re competing with telco fiber, you need a fiber-like access platform,” he said, holding that Advent’s technology enables operators to deliver fiber quality at cable modem price points.