[forinti]

This wouldn't be legal in my country unless all the apartments had one owner, because the telcos have a monopoly on communications.

The law says one person can't stretch a cable over to his neighbour, because they would need a licence for that (although if you did do that, who would know?).

[consp]

My parents shared coaxiale television for years with the neighbors. Technically illegal but there is no way to know with analogue television.

[mattmanser]

I think our phone lines must work differently, the entire infrastructure is owned by one company (BT) who must lease it to other companies. So they can do things like this, as everyone needs a router at the end to access it and that's how they charge per customer.

There is a separate cable network, again one operator (Virgin), who don't lease it out.