> * Connecticut OKs plan by AT&T to offer TV without a franchise
> One reason we pay a lot in cable fees is that each municipality got
> their hands in the mix and take out their tribute.
Actually, Federal law limits the franchise fee to 5%, so that's what they all get.
My town gets several dollars from each customer. How did they get
> along before cable TV tax revenue (relatively new in my area)?
I don't know about your town, but around here, we didn't have to buy $300,000 fire engines and we didn't have to pay 15% of people's pay into the pension fund.
> * Cable & Wireless bails on residential broadband
> I haven't looked at them in a long time, but C&W is an ancient company
> that used to handle overseas telegraph cables and early radio.
Yes, they were originally the Gutta Percha company that made the insulation for the earliest telegraph cables. They've rather reinvented themselves in recent years, spun off Hong Kong tel which was their largest subsidiary, and now they're sort of a generic global telecom company with a sideline of extracting outrageous monopoly prices from their little island telcos.
R's,
John