On Mon, 7 May 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: [snip]
Cable operators are unregulated local monopolies.
No. They are regulated, by the franchise agreement. If the agreement isn't strong enough to ensure the highest best use of public right-of-way then it's a failure of the local government for not making it so (or the state/FCC for forbiding the local governments from placing certain requirements in the agreement). It appears that there is a lot of shooting from the hip going on here. cable regulation is fraught with legal complications and is changing rapidly right now, and the layman anaysis going on here isn't doing the topic justice. It's additionally complicated by the fact that the laws differ from state to state. In Florida, it's covered by Sec. 166.046, Florida Statutes and the Communications Act of 1934, the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996. If there is any intrest, I believe that Martin County (Fl)'s 1999 agreement with Adelphia is online someplace, I could track down a URL for it.