more on cable companies

[RJ Atkinson <rja () inet org>]

At 17:50 07/05/01, Jeff Mcadams wrote:

> The legal arguement comes down to.  The cablecos are a monopoly, period.

In parts of the Boston suburbs, RCN has built a parallel cable
TV system (with DOCSIS cable modem service also) serving houses
that were already (and still are) servicable from Media-One
(now part of AT&T Broadband).

RCN are actively overbuilding a number of Comcast markets
(e.g. Montgomery County MD, Washington DC) and some AT&T/TCI 
markets (e.g. San Francisco CA) and are working towards an
overbuild in several additional markets (e.g. Cox Cable's 
Fairfax County VA market).

Seems to me that it isn't a monopoly if one has more than
one CATV company to choose from, which is the case in at least
the markets above.  Also seems to me that we ought to encourage
more companies to follow RCN's lead as competition is a fine thing.

Now there might be different markets (probably more of them)
where there is currently only 1 CATV company, but even there
one has data choices (sometimes DSL, usually always DirecPC)
and video choices (DirecTV, DISH). 

Ran
rja () inet org