Cable TV is Getting Better 

Cable TV is a system of providing television to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through fixed optical fibers or coaxial cables as opposed to the over-the-air method used in traditional television broadcasting (via radio waves) in which a television antenna is required. FM radio programming, high-speed Internet, telephony, and similar non-television services may also be provided.

The abbreviation CATV is often used to mean "Cable TV". It originally stood for Community Antenna Television, from cable television's origins in 1948: in areas where over-the-air reception was limited by mountainous terrain, large "community antennas" were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes.

It is most commonplace in North America, Europe, Australia and East Asia, though it is present in many other countries, mainly in South America and the Middle East. Cable TV has had little success in Africa, as it is not cost-effective to lay cables in sparsely populated areas. So-called "wireless cable" or microwave-based systems are used instead.

Consumers may be concerned by how businesses and government get on. The US cable industry spends millions of dollars annually on government relationships. Regularly this industry employs the spouses, sons and daughters of influential mayors, councilmen, commissioners, and other officials to assure its continued local monopoly and preferred market allocations, many of which have been questioned as unethical.

The monopoly on cable television has historically been enforced by local governments. Cable maintains thousands of such de facto monopolies. In order to provide service to individual homes, a cable provider must place its cable wiring along and across local streets or other rights-of-way. To do so, the provider must get permission from the local government(s) that own those streets via rights-of-way permits.

Operational permission comes in the form of a document called a local franchise agreement. Most of local government(s) chose to grant permission to only one company, however, recently states have developed broader franchising laws to drive more investment and competition. Changes in the federal law in 1992 had forced local governments to grant permission to other companies to provide service, however the U.S. Government found in 2006 that only 2% of U.S. households had a competitive choice. In some cases Comcast, with municipal government approval, had entered into market allocation schemes. By agreeing to not compete head to head, consumers thus are perpetually locked into a single monopoly cable provider with annual price escalations reaching 93% in the past decade.

Customer Surveys
A recent third party survey of citizens found approximately 62% of the respondents were very dissatisfied (along with another 25% who were dissatisfied) with the cost of cable television service. A majority of the respondents were satisfied with the friendliness and courtesy of customer service personnel, however, approximately 30% of the respondents rated the cable company's performance as poor. With regard to open-ended comments, respondents felt that the cost of the cable service was too high, a need for cable competition existed and the desire for a basic cable package offering was desired. Although respondents cited these critical issues, the local monopoly structure could be considered to preserve the status quo of poor customer service, limited product choices, no direct competition and uncontrollable annual cable TV price increases.

Relief for consumers is being created by state level a multi jurisdictional franchise and service process that will spur investment and competition; thus driving economic development sought by state and local government leaders.

The industry strongly lobbies against federal "family tier" and "a la carte cable television" bills that would give consumers the option to purchase individual channels rather than a broad tier of programming. These anti-consumer issues continue to garner attention from state governments, Congress and FCC Chairman Martin.

When the infant BBC Television service was started in 1932, Rediffusion, which had supplied cable radio services since 1928, started providing "Pipe TV" to its customers who had difficulties tuning into the weak TV broadcast signal.

[edit] Other cable-based services

Coaxial cables are capable of bi-directional carriage of signals as well as the transmission of large amounts of data. Cable television signals use only a portion of the bandwidth available over coaxial lines. This leaves plenty of space available for other digital services such as broadband internet and cable telephony.

Broadband internet is achieved over coaxial cable by using cable modems to convert the network data into a type of digital signal that can be transferred over coaxial cable. One problem with some cable systems is the older amplifiers placed along the cable routes are unidirectional thus in order to allow for uploading of data the customer would need to use an analog telephone modem to provide for the upstream connection. This limited the upstream speed to 31.2k and prevented the always-on convenience broadband internet typically provides. Many large cable systems have upgraded or are upgrading their equipment to allow for bi-directional signals, thus allowing for greater upload speed and always-on convenience, though these upgrades are expensive.

In North America, Australia and Europe many cable operators have already introduced cable telephone service, which operates just like existing fixed line operators. This service involves installing a special telephone interface at the customer's premises that converts the analog signals from the customer's in-home wiring into a digital signal, which is then sent on the local loop (replacing the analog last mile, or POTS) to the company's switching center, where it is connected to the PSTN.

The biggest obstacle to cable telephone service is the need for nearly 100% reliable service for emergency calls. One of the standards available for digital cable telephony, PacketCable, seems to be the most promising and able to work with the Quality of Service demands of traditional analog POTS service. The biggest advantage to digital cable telephone service is similar to the advantage of digital cable TV, namely that data can be compressed, resulting in much less bandwidth used than a dedicated analog circuit-switched service. Other advantages include better voice quality and integration to a VoIP network providing cheap or unlimited nationwide and international calling. Note that in many cases, digital cable telephone service is separate from cable modem service being offered by many cable companies and does not rely on IP traffic or the Internet.

Beginning in 2004 in the United States, the traditional cable television providers and traditional telecommunication companies increasingly compete in providing voice, video and data services to residences. The combination of TV, telephone and Internet access is commonly called triple play regardless of whether CATV or telcos offer it.

Consumer issues
Using a cable service naturally requires that access to a cable network be installed at the customer location, laying/maintaining this cable has costs. From the consumers viewpoint, having a choice of who provides this service may be deemed desirable, however from a business viewpoint may be undesirable; as this would require multiple companies investing in laying many generally identical cables to the same location. Altogether that could mean greater costs, since there is more physical cable in existence. Therefore the idea of a natural monopoly may apply, whereby in most places only one cable provider is preferable (seemingly for all concerned).

Competition in one place may therefore come in the form of terrestrial or satellite providers. As with all situations where competition is in some way limited, there is a potential for consumers to feel they are unfairly treated by the market. Market regulators therefore may tend to limit such consumer concerns by broadening the consumers choice from a single provider, for instance in expecting them to offer different priced channel selections, improving service other times (for instance, by making use of technological progress) and measures such as providing free-for-all (public) TV.

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