> I think it is mostly because having multiple companies laying physical wires is problematic. It is very capital intensive, and disruptive to infrastructure (digging up lots of ground). In the end, it might not be better for customers; for example, imagine 4 different cable companies spend all the capital to lay 4 sets of cables to every house in a town of 100,000. Since there are 4 choices of cable company to choose from, then you can imagine each company will only get around 25% of the subscribers. The infrastructure costs to cover running cable to 100% of the houses now has to be supported by only 25% of the subscriber base.
> In other words, the same number of subscribers now have to pay for 4x the infrastructure costs.
In other words, building into each others' territories raises the cost of serving customers while putting downward pressure on pricing. The executives recognize that and try to avoid it.
If the cable companies and telecommunications companies had competing services when they were building their networks in the 20th century, I imagine that they likely would have avoided overlapping service areas too.
The downward pressure of pricing can't press prices below the cost of the infrastructure and maintenance cost (otherwise, the company will either go out of business or stop offering the service)
> In other words, the same number of subscribers now have to pay for 4x the infrastructure costs.
In other words, building into each others' territories raises the cost of serving customers while putting downward pressure on pricing. The executives recognize that and try to avoid it.
If the cable companies and telecommunications companies had competing services when they were building their networks in the 20th century, I imagine that they likely would have avoided overlapping service areas too.