For decades cable television has had virtually no competition. Cable companies enjoyed monopolies in their territories and customer paid the price with poor customer service, constantly rising rates, and very little innovation. Satellite TV helped a little, but the complexity and cost of satellite dish installation and that fact that many condos and virtually all apartment buildings could not put up a satellite dish kept local cable companies felling safe and their customers felling trapped.
Verizon has changed all that in less then 2 years. Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic TV service is now the 11th largest pay TV service in the country and is poised to move up way on that list in short order. To date, 1.2 million people have subscribed to FiOS, the vast majority of them had been former cable customers, and subscriber growth shows no sign of slowing down. In fact Verizon keeps adding new territories where FiOS is available. The cable companies have lost their monopolies and customers are the ones who will benefit the most.
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