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

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).