Cable TV Gets Competitive in Indiana

Indiana passed a bill today to allow competition in the cable industry. It included provisions for video over phone lines.

I recently had the pleasure of working with the telephone company in Kaplan, LA. Kaplan is a small town about 30 minutes west of Lafayette, LA, with a population of about 5000. The telephone company there is very advanced for its size. They also happen to be the town's cable TV and Internet service provider, and they are using video-over-adsl to provide cable TV and broadband Internet access to their customers, while also providing POTS service.

Their video system is pretty good- the quality at the customer's location is as good as your standard coaxial cable tv signal, with the benefits of an on-screen guide and the ability to access multiple channels from a single set-top box. The boxes can tune in up to three streams simultaneously, which it then outputs on a single RF line (but on three different channels- I think they are VHF 3, 7, and 11) and they connect to the central office using an integrated adsl modem. Cool!