And Comcast just announced it's buying TWC....bah...
[video=youtube;0ilMx7k7mso]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ilMx7k7mso[/video]
There are thing in the Tariff's in each state that make the cable companies do what they do. First in each municipality they want to control how may wires Iare strung around town so the local city councle requires only one cable company. (monopoly in forced by the City) So the city makes or aproves the rules the cable company goes by when they are at you house for service. Second they are required to have a ccertain number of analog chanels on the cable system by tariff so pour people can use old TV's.
Wired tecnologies give people more band width because they can use all the RF freq's within the spectrum and not have to licens a shaired freq. space. They really can give you more internet speed that is only limited by the number of channels saved from TV freq's. On twisted pair you are limited by the number of twists per foot and the intermodulation distortion, near end cross talk and signial to noise ratio of that wire. Prices of these markets are mostly caused by sunk cost of infrastructure pluse O&M. Also the indiviual cable channels you get or network bundles are just a passthrough. Talk to HBO, ESPN, MSNBC and others about why they pas the products the way they do and not the cable company's. For internet on charter cable I get 30 mb's for the same price U-vers gets 7 mb's. U-vers uses 5 channels of a T1 to get you that 7 mb speed. A T1 has 24 channels 64k channels for use normal video uses up 128k per TV channel pluse that use one channel for out of band signlining. So ask why ATT only gives each household 1/2 a T1 band widith.
Satellite is great for one way communications of the TV signals because they only have to transmit it once for all custimers but transmit and receive for internet the band width is very limited as regulated by the FCC. Look at Hughesnet they won't even tell you anything except they are 15 time faster than they used to be. that speed was 128k but they don't tell you that.
So I say before beleiving videos like this read the state tariff's, read the local ordinances and know the FCC rules. I don't work for any of these technologies but have been a techniction on all of them at one time or another. The technical part limits speed and tariff limits programing if you want cheeper programing think about the cost of production of that programing.
If someone is willing to pay more to get programing than it is worth to you the market says the price will be higher. So if we quit consuming a certian stars programs or a certin sports figure games the prices will come down. And you get what you pay for on the technolagy.