It's going to be interesting to see what happens now with cable TV in Opelika, Ala. Residents expressed their distaste for incumbent provider Charter Communications (OTC BB: CCMM) by overwhelmingly approving a city-backed plan to build a municipal telecommunications service. Now that same city has turned around and signed a 10-year franchise agreement with Knology (Nasdaq: KNOL), which, not surprisingly, had been in the running to overbuild Charter anyway and said so before the residents even voted.
"Knology is building a state-of-the-art broadband network that will allow us to offer higher Internet speeds and more high definition channels than are currently offered by Charter," said Knology exec Royce Ard.
Which is all well and fine, but the voters said they wanted the city to do it. "It's all about choices and one day soon Opelika citizens will have three providers to choose from," said Mayor Gary Fuller.
Which kind of seems like a bit of overkill.
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