Lawrence-based Sunflower Broadband is one of four cable operators named to the CED Top 50. The others: Rogers Communications Inc., which is the No. 1 cable company in Canada, and Comcast Corp. and Time Warner Inc., the two largest operators in the United States.

“Sunflower Broadband may be a small operator, but it thinks big,” CED said last week, in its annual listing of industry leaders. “… Sunflower Broadband has been out in front, publicly kicking the tires and deploying the things that its bigger brethren are just now thinking about or putting into the field.”

CED — the common name for Communication Engineering & Design magazine, which is considered the industry’s premier trade publication — recognized Sunflower for being among the first companies to provide Digeo Inc.’s well-regarded Moxi digital video recorders.

CED also noted that Sunflower was among the first U.S. cable operators to resell mobile voice services through Sprint — a move that later would be followed by a “huge consortium” involving Sprint Nextel Corp., Time Warner, Comcast, Cox Communications Inc. and Advance/Newhouse Communications Inc.

“Guess we’re just trying to say that Sunflower tends to be an aggressive creature of broadband,” the magazine said.

Patrick Knorr, general manager of Sunflower Broadband, said it was flattering for Sunflower and its 240 employees to be recognized among “technical leaders in the world.” Also on the list are Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Sprint Nextel and others.

“We’re part of that elite group,” Knorr said. “I think that’s an incredible compliment to our operation.”

Sunflower Broadband provides cable television, telephone and high-speed Internet services to about 35,000 residential and business customers in Lawrence, Tonganoxie, Basehor, Eudora, Piper and parts of rural Douglas and Leavenworth counties.

Sunflower is a division of The World Company, which owns the Journal-World and several weekly newspapers — including The Mirror newspaper of Tonganoxie and the Basehor Sentinel.