[rkalla]

Others have stated it well - and I understand the point you are making - but they are at the mercy of the market and their stock price... if they spend $10mm upgrading city infrastructure for an area they have a total monopoly in (that no one could leave them anyway) at a high level, that wouldn't be money "well spent"

-- as opposed to winning 1,000s of subscribers in a highly competitive city through marketing and new product/speed offerings.

I'm not TOTALLY discarding the 'all cable companies are evil' element here, just that if I was sitting at the head of that table and my stock price was all that mattered to my board and the exec team, I'd probably make very similar decisions to ignore monopolized markets unless I absolutely had to (i.e. bad publicity)