Fifty-four percent of the cable systems surveyed by In-Stat say they face a telephone company that already is offering video service in their cable TV service area, In-Stat says. Oddly enough, though rural areas often are considered to be service backwaters, lagging urban and suburban areas in broadband access, for example, rural areas often are places where telcos have moved early to offer entertainment video services.
Historically, rural telcos have been licensed cable operators as well. But some telcos that aren't wired competitors rely on satellite partnerships to get the job done. And there's a scale effect here. It takes a long time for a large telco to upgrade nearly any part of its infrastructure.
Small operators, simply because they are small, can upgrade much faster. Keep in mind that rural operators often have a few hundred to several thousand customers, not millions. The same sort of process works at the level of a country. A small country can upgrade its facilities much faster than a larger country, simply because of the differences in scale.
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