snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com responded:
I agree with Garrett. Your local cable company HAD to build a separate network in order to carry NTSC television signals. A cable network is vastly different from the telephone network: it has to carry much higher frequencies (by about 14 octaves), and it serves an entirely different market.
The barriers that Garrett describes have largely prevented construction of competitive networks of either type.
Huh? That's news to me. CATV plant uses essentially the same "work methods" as telcos: same poles, same pole hardware, same type of supporting strand, same trenches, same pedestals, same rights-of-way, same easements, same construction methods. Often the same conduits and manholes. Of course, the topology is very different (tree-and- branch rather than star); the signal-carrying cable is different (coax rather than multipair copper); and the electronic devices are different. But these differences don't make CATV networks "far cheaper."
In fact, CATV constructions cost were often higher. Because most CATV networks were built half-a-century after telco networks, construction costs in existing neighborhoods were often substantially higher than new construction would have been. But these differences resulted from having to work around existing facilities, not from different "work methods."
On the other hand, CATV labor costs were often lower than telco's because CATV companies were usually non-union. Furthermore, a CATV headend costs less than a telephone central office, but that doesn't affect the construction cost of the outside-plant network.
snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com continued:
Telephone service over CATV networks wasn't realistically possible until VOIP came along (some would say it still isn't).
The cable TV industry built networks to carry NTSC television signals, not local-loop services. The "barriers to entry in 'local loop' services" that Garrett describes don't apply to networks that aren't designed to provide local loops.
Garrett Wollman:
snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com:
Because local loop plant won't carry NTSC television signals. The only way a telco could/can provide CATV is by building a coax (or, nowadays, HFC or all-fiber) network.
And because, under federal law, the telcos' "natural monopoly" didn't apply to CATV service. Any telco that wanted to offer CATV still had to get a franchise from every LFA.
As it happens, a few Bell companies did just that. SNET obtained a state-wide franchise for Connecticut, and Ameritech built several cable systems in its territory, mostly in Ohio. But SBC shut them all down after it bought the companies.
Bell Canada built numerous CATV systems in its territory. In most cases, it overlashed the coax cable onto its existing telco strand (cheaper construction, but a real maintenance headache).
In the early days of the CATV industry, GTE built many CATV networks on a "leaseback" basis: GTE financed, built, and owned the network, and leased it to a franchised cable operator.
Cable companies surmounted it by building an entirely different kind of network.
snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com:
I agree with John. See my post about new-plant construction costs at
Neal McLain