Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino filed an emergency petition with the FCC to have the right to regulate cable prices. Boston is mad that Comcast is charging so much for cable. A statement from Boston’s Office of Cable Communications says Comcast has increased prices by 18 percent this year and that this is a “burden” on “working families.” Ars Technica tracks this story back to 2002, when the FCC approved a measure to deregulate basic cable costs for Boston, which meant that Boston had no say in how much basic cable cost its residents. The idea was that the FCC deemed Boston to have enough competition to deregulate. However, the other company providing cable service to Boston residents wasn’t able to offer service to as many residents as expected, which basically meant your option for cable if you lived in Boston was Comcast. Interesting to consider how the FCC looks at competition in local markets given that’s what the agency will do when it looks at the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
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