Historically, cable TV companies do not compete directly with each other in the same geographic areas. That is changing a bit, though. In the United Kingdom, if Comcast completes its purchase of Sky, Sky and Liberty Global (Virgin) will compete head to head, for the first time in the U.K. market.
That is something that has happened in telecom markets, both mobile and fixed, and some have wondered how long it would be until cable companies began to compete in such a manner as well. We appear to be one step closer, in the U.K. market.
In the U.S. market, such head-to-head competition is more likely to come as cable TV companies get into the mobility business, as has been the case for U.S. telcos generally. Even when firms such as AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink mostly have not competed against each other in the fixed network area, there has been no way to limit competition when mobile networks operate ubiquitously across the country.
That means AT&T and Verizon, for example, were early on forced to compete against each other nationwide, in the mobile arena. In the fixed networks area, they have not competed in the same territories.
That now is changing as Verizon plans a 5G fixed wireless attack in AT&T areas (out of region). But Liberty Global and Comcast now will face each other as direct competitors in the U.K. market as well. That is new.
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