The Cartel of Doral

Here is my friend Artie. He's on fire, ready to take on corporate America. The reason? His TiVo is down. No digital channels, apparently he needs a card or something to make it work. Which is kinda weird as we can now receive a good number of digital channels over the air.

We heard stories like this before, the public services company that has horrendous customer service and after voicing "Scotty, Shields On!" protects itself behind the "voicejail".

We all like competition, but public services is a tricky one. There is infrastructure to lay down, and nobody is willing to do the investment if they don't have guaranteed returns. This is why government issues "rights of way" and gives the cable company an area to develop. A Cartel, a monopoly of a function in a given geographical area.

The problem with this is what we all know, and this is how the telecommunications industry used to be, until the Telecommunications Act of the eighties (oh, the eighties!), separated the ownership of the copper from the service. Oddly enough this is a case where free competition is spurred as a product of more regulation!

The question here is: Has cable the same ranks as Telecom as far as a strategic public service now that a lot of people run their Internets and phones through them?