1 The term "Baby Bells" refers to the seven regional telephone companies created when AT&T agreed to divest itself of local calling services following allegations of antitrust by the U.S. Department of Justice.
2 Biography of Robert Tarlton, board member, The Cable Center, Denver, CO, Education and Information Resources, http://www.cablecenter.org/about/boardDetail.cfm?id=51.
3 Thomas R. Eisenmann, "Cable TV: From Community Antennas to Wired Cities," Business History Review, July 10, 2000.
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBO. See HBO History.
5 HBO program signals are beamed to a satellite in stationary orbit more than 22,000 miles above the Equator. The satellite bounces the signals back to terrestrial receivers throughout North America.
6 Nielsen Media Research, "Nielsen Reports Americans Watch TV at Record Levels," Sept. 29, 2005.
7 Federal Communications Commission, "Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming, 12th Annual Report, March 3, 2006.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Jonathan E. Samon, "When ‘Yes’ Means No: The Subjugation of Competition and Consumer Choice by Exclusive Municipal Cable Franchises," Seton Hall Law Review 747.
12 Gene Kimmelman, Senior Director for Advocacy and Public Policy, Consumers Union, Testimony Before the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, June 18, 2003, http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=813&wit_id=2359.
13 Austan Goolsbee and Amil Petrin, "The Consumer Gains from Direct Broadcast Competition with Cable TV," May 29, 2001.
14 U.S. General Accounting Office, "Issues Related to Competition and Subscriber Rates in the Cable Television Industry," GAO-04-8, Oct. 2003.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 U.S. General Accounting Office, "Telecommunications: Wire-Based Competition Benefited Consumers in Selected Markets," GAO-04-241, Feb. 2004.
18 Federal Communications Commission, "Eleventh Annual Report, In the Matter of: Annual Assessment of the Status of Competition in the Market for the Delivery of Video Programming," Feb. 4, 2005.
19 See 47 U.S.C. § 541, Part III (1996), "General Franchise Requirements, http://www.mass.gov/dte/catv/documents/telec626.pdf#search=%2247%20U.S.C.%20541%201996%22.
20 Thomas W. Hazlett., "Station Brakes: The Government’s Campaign Against Cable Television," Reason, Feb. 1995.
21 Jonathan E. Samon, "When ‘Yes’ Means No: The Subjugation of Competition and Consumer Choice by Exclusive Municipal Cable Franchises," Seton Hall Law Review 747.
22 Ibid.
23 Fiber optics refers to the transmission of information as light pulses along a glass or plastic wire. Transmitters convert electrical impulses from a computer into light streams. The use of optical fiber eliminates the electromagnetic interference commonly experienced with copper cables.
24 DSL technology enables data to be transmitted at high speeds through the copper-wire telephone network. A "transceiver" linked to a personal computer connects to the network of an Internet Service Provider through the local telephone network. Data is compressed into digital packets and routed by the Internet Service Provider to the World Wide Web.
25 American Customer Satisfaction Index, May 16, 2006. http://www.theacsi.org/first_quarter.htm#cst
26 Federal Communications Commission, "Report on Cable Industry Prices," Feb. 4, 2005, http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-05-12A1.pdf.
27 Thomas W. Hazlett, "Cable TV Franchises as Barriers to Video Competition," George Mason University School of Law, p. 3, n. 15.
28 Ibid., p. 38.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid, p. 24.
31 T.W. Hazlett and G.S. Ford, "The Fallacy of Regulatory Symmetry: An Economic Analysis of the ‘Level Playing Field’ in Cable TV Franchising Statutes," Business and Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2001.
32 G.S. Ford and T.M. Koutsky, "’In Delay There is no Plenty’: The Consumer Welfare Costs of Franchise Reform Delay," Phoenix Center, Washington, D.C., January 2006
33 The Perryman Group, "An Assessment of the Impact of Competition in the Delivery of Wireline Video Services on Business Activity in Texas," July 2005.
34 Each market pair contained a community with a broadband service provider and one without. The market pairs were chosen based on their similarities in terms of size and demographics.
35 U.S. General Accounting Office, "Telecommunications: Wire-Based Competition Benefited Consumers in Selected Markets," GAO-04-241, Feb. 2004.
36 Ibid.
37 R. Crandall and Robert Litan, "The Benefits of New Wireline Video Competition for Consumers and Local Government Finances," Criterion Economics, LLC, May 2006.