Most communities have “equal access” rules that say you must provide the TV service to the entire community and not just cherry-pick the wealthier areas.

Since the fiber to the home/node strategies of SBC and Verizon are based upon targetting the high demographic areas first, poor areas may not get access to IPTV for years, if ever.

And what politician would allow a telco to offer sexy new services to the rich people in town while consigning the lower income people (who actually are a larger percentage of eligible voters) to inferior services.

This was a battle the cable companies fought 30 years ago.

The telcos are just waking up to the problem.

And the cable companies are making sure that local communities are aware of this. Comcast has already started making noise within the communities where it already has been granted a franchise that the telcos should be barred from offering IPTV unless they cover the entire area.

This could be a MAJOR problem for telcos trying to offer a “triple play” in competition to what the cable companies are offering.