In last Wednesday's physical copy of The Wall Street Journal, I read an article about Verizon's plan to offer 140 channels for $36.90. As Peter Grant points out in the article for WSJ, the phone companies are struggling to compete and are increasingly finding that, with the infrastructure already in place, they can offer cable to customers much cheaper in many cases than the cable companies offer them for. The company is testing in a few markets right now but are having trouble trying to get approved from state-to-state.
The argument reminded me of some media theorists' arguments that old media producers will just continually find a way to move from one product to another to stay on top of the curve, and we have constantly seen old phone service providers such as BellSouth do just that, so that, even with new technology, most of the familiar faces are still in charge.
