[Buffalo Jim]

At your prior residence up North did you have multiple cable companies to choose from ?

In most of the communities where I have resided the " cable franchise " for that community was awarded by the local government for a number of years . They picked a single provider due to a desire to minimize the number of delivery wires to be strung across their neighborhoods .

I lived in one community in Northern NJ back in the late 70`s where you had a choice of two different cable companies . However those two companies eventually merged .

Satellite and Cable are migrating to deliver solely via the Internet.
Within about 5 years the " Satellite " services will no longer come to you home to install a Dish Receiving Device they will be delivering everything via the Internet . Just guessing but it would be easy to predict that the " Hard Wire " services such as Comcast will move in that direction as well .
Ultimately competition will force them all to change their delivery model .