Kathy wrote:
>oligopolies are where the bulk of the market is controlled by a few firms
>cable companies have non-compete licenses that give them an effective
>monopoly over any specific geographical area, but as an industry, cable (in
>the US) is an oligopoly.
We have an interesting situation going on here with cable providers. The
City of Ashland's Electrical Engineering Dept., which runs Ashland's
private electrical power system, has gotten tentative approval of a $3.5
million budget to install a fiberoptic network though town to provide cable
TV and high-speed Internet access (similar to one in Palo Alto, I believe).
Our commercial cable provider has fought this move bitterly. Yet we've
heard that they've decided that, rather than pull out of this market,
they'll upgrade their service and use Ashland as an experiment in learning
how to prevent loss of other markets like falling dominoes. This sounds
like healthy competition to me.
BTW, there's a bit of irony in the fact that the City Council licenses one
provider and now is going into competition with it. There were quite a few
chuckles when in the first hearing, a representative from the commercial
provider mentioned that they provide cable TV service to XX number of
customers. He was trying to build a case around the City's projected
numbers of customers being unrealistic. Suddenly our gorgeous blonde female
mayor delicately held a hand up to interrupt him, shuffled through some
papers, smiled sweetly, and said, "that's funny, it says here on your
license application that you only serve X customers. Maybe we need to
review your license application and fees."
Suz
Suzanne Stephens, Stephens Design; Ashland, Oregon
541-552-1192 http://www.KickassDesign.com/ ICQ #8190023
CyberCircus Grand Prize Winners http://www.thecybercircus.com/
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