atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Why is it that (cable company question)

Here's something I've always wondered about -

Why is it that cable companies don't have to play by the same rules as the phone companies, as far as who gets access to the areas they service? For example, Comcast and TIme Warner are the 2 cable co's in KC (That I know of anyway). But if I want Time Warner as a provider, it's not an option. I get comcast, and that's that, because comcast serves my area.

Is it:

1) a political/legal thing (i.e. for some reason they aren't covered under the same deregulation rules Ma Bell has to endure)

2) A physical thing, i.e. the physical layout of the cable networks just don't support it

3) The cable companies have worked out an agreement so there isn't a monopoly and areas are subdived under some set of rules to make it "fair"

4) There aren't enough cable providers, nor anyone interested in starting another one up for it to make any difference.

5) Something else

I've always wondered this as the lines between cable, twisted pair, fiber, and to some extent even satellite, continue to fade.

Just doesn't seem right that if it's a phone line (and I assume that includes fiber and copper), any schmo with the $$$ can come along and provide local or LD service, but cable companies don't appear to have to share their infrastructure with anyone, nor do I have any say in who my provider is.

Not that I'd ever have cable again anyway, I've never had reliable service when I did have it.

It's a physical and a legal thing. You get the provider in your area and they are not required to allow access on their network to competitors like the ILEC's are.

In this area, it is all about franchises. Each city or county puts their service area up for bidding every ten years or so. Here, we have Comcast in the counties and Cox within the city limits. In the early days of cable TV, the service providers only went after markets in densely-populated areas. Over time, the gaps between them have been filled in by a myriad of service providers.

It is more scattered than the phone service incumbents because phone service has been around a lot longer. There weren't nearly as many choices for phone service providers a century ago.

Unless an incumbent telco or CATV really screws up, it is very rare that a franchise isn't renewed automatically. It is actually becoming the opposite now, where telcos are abandoning markets where they aren't making enough profit (New England for example).

LOL

My area is pretty much the way Ed described this for cable.

Just doesn't seem right that if it's a phone line (and I assume that includes fiber and copper), any schmo with the $$$ can come along and provide local or LD service, but cable companies don't appear to have to share their infrastructure with anyone, nor do I have any say in who my provider is.

At least part of the answer to the question that was asked above is that the old Bell System companies could not provide long distance service outside of the boundaries of their territory. They wanted in on the long distance market. In order to move the process along they consented to allow competition in the local exchange market.

It went as far that if an addition was being done on a central office, rooms, separate entrances, and in some cases, bathroom facilities had to be provided for CLECs. In some cases CLEC equipment was rack mounted in the same central office floor space as the operating company and the equipment was actually maintained by operating company employees rather than those of the CLEC.

Same here, the cable TV franchise is a big deal. However, it has essentially been the same company here since I can remember...Cablevision, which became Adelphia, which is now Time Warner.

Up until recently, the New York State Public Service (utilities) Commission did not regard cable TV service as a utility, and therefore did not regulate it.

We actually have two cable companies in our town. The "incumbent" cable company was an old mom and pop place that got sold to Centurytel when they bought the mom and pop phone company.
They refused to provide high speed internet access because they had DSL on the phone side of the house. My neighborhood is in a place where we have Centurytel cable, but AT&T as a LEC. We are too far out for DSL, so we had nothing.
Eventually we signed a petition to allow Time Warner to come into town. They had to lay their own facilities and now every house has 2 cable feeds. And the rarity of the choice between 2 cable companies.

Around here, there's one BIG one, Videotron. However, there are smaller ones and the smaller ones CAN take over a client within Videotrons area, by paying fees to Videotron, either a 1-shot payment or monthly fees.

For example: Client wants broadband via cable. They can get their small company as the ISP, who charges a 1-time conversion fee to take over the service from Videotron, then you pay a monthly fee/month for the broadband.

Well, maybe....the little town I service had 1) Home Telephone, 2) Peoples' Telephone, and 3) What was called Southwestern Bell around 1900.

I haven't checked lately but Kansas had 72 other telephone companies besides at&t. Choices? Not many.

Ed has it for our area here in KC....franchises, state tarriffs, and physical location for expansion.

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