• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 2, 2007

Apartment building tenants never had it so good -- at least according to cable operators.

Now that the FCC has struck down a rule eliminating the exclusivity that cable operators have had for years in distributing TV programming, much will change, say the likes of companies such as Comcast.

Apartment dwellers will now get alternatives, like those old phone utility companies now turned into free market companies like AT&T and Verizon. Still, any competition is better than no competition -- even if it seems you're letting the fox back into the henhouse.

But Comcast and other cable companies say all this will be bad for the consumer -- that somehow cable operators are the only ones on the planet that can offer inexpensive home TV entertainment.

Here's a Comcast official responding to the FCC: "The net result is that many consumers are likely to wind up paying more for services if the FCC's interference in the competitive marketplace stands."

Competitive marketplace? With just one choice for apartment dwellers? I guess the other choice is rabbit ears or wire hangers. Cable operators' real competitors appear to be hardware stores.

Cable operators like Comcast should be a lot more secure than this. Cable roundly beat the likes of upstart satellite distributors for the last decade or so -- disproving what analysts assumed would be the death knell for land-based cable-distributed TV programming.

Why can't they figure this out again? Maybe they need to up the ante and offer a "quadruple play," adding in services like water, gas, or electricity into the home.

Cable companies say apartment dwellers will probably end up paying more money if the phone companies -- or anyone else -- are allowed to compete.

How is that? Maybe cable companies want to make the case that they lose money equipping apartment buildings with cable TV. Perhaps when confronted with competition, cable operators will trick us all, and raise their rates.

That would truly be anti-competitive.