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To: lml who wrote (3261)	2/5/2000 4:58:00 PM
From: Lynn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4298

Hello lml, >Also, I did not follow your comments regarding cable. Do you imply that area does not have cable & because Cox hold the exclusive franchise rights to your area you never will since Cox is unwilling to expend the necessary capital? Yes, precisely. Originally there were 5 cable companies that came into this state. Our State legislature was stupid [a term used even back then in the newspaper] and allowed the cable companies to decide how to draw lines in the state for territories. The cables also bamboozled the legislature, got themselves too much power. Gobble, gobble, gobble over time and Cox holds most of the state, ate most of [all?] the other cable companies. They say my area is too "rural." Ha! This is a dinky state, far more rural areas in neighboring CT--and RI-- have the cable. It is basically flat. I am from a *really* rural, mountainous area of PA that has had the cable since the 1950s. Cox personnel have told me during all my various phone calls that I have to understand that the cable was originally for people in urban areas and rural areas are only serviced by cable in a sporadic way. Ha! The cable was started by a few guys in PA precisely so that rural people could get TV--one of these guys lived (until he died) about 5 blocks from my parents. Service Electric is the name of the first cable company in the U.S.A., is still in business--but the (stupid) people who answer the phone at Cox tell me this is not true. Yea, right. > I would recommend that your obtain signatures of your neighbors & submit a petition to the local franchising authority, be it a city council or county board of supervisors. There may be a mechanism available to permit another MSO (if a willing one can be id'd) to provide service to your area. Petitions have been signed a number of times. Legislative representatives have talked themselves blue in the face. People have tried. As you can probably pick up from the tone of this posting, the lack of cable out here is a very, very sore subject. Anger and activism go in waves. Right now, since this past summer, actually, people are especially outraged. Why? Williams company is running fiber optic cable through our area for some contract they have between Boston and GA. We had hoped Williams had somehow circumvented Cox and would be offering us cable service. Nope. It's just going through our area. This is PrimeStar land, being converted to DirectTV land [DirectTV bought out PrimeStar]. Lynn