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Are these laws any more onerous than the ones the private providers must respect? I don’t dispute that they are anti-competitive, but I wonder these are laws (

Are these laws any more onerous than the ones the private providers must respect? I don’t dispute that they are anti-competitive, but I wonder these are laws (or similar) are also the reason there is not private-sector competition. Would like to see original sources, and comparisons. Remember, most cable and phone systems were designed by municipalities as monopolies, which is what got us here today. They were seen as utilities.

rdl 12y ago
As far as I can tell, cable systems were basically not "designed" -- it was a pretty shady industry in the early 80s, with a bunch of shoddy work, questionable ROW deals, etc. Consolidation happened and a bunch of regional carriers happened and maybe some of the later deployments were "designed", but very little of the early catv was built the way telephony was, which was itself usually different from water/sewer. Electric depended on where, and was either sketchy (in some of the East Coast cities), or some kind of "designed" system, or government (RE).