Monopolies are less efficient than if the industry were pure competition. Does this apply to cable TV?

Question

Monopolies are less efficient than if the industry were pure competition. Does this apply to cable TV?

Answer 1

No because there are very high transactions costs for firms associated with providing cable tv.  Coase talks about this alot in his theories on the nature of the firm.  A purely competitive marketplace can only exist where there are few costs associated with obtaining the goods.  As additional infrastructure costs arise only large firms can provide the goods effectively to a large number of people.

Answer 2

yes

even though the way cable TV is set up we can only have one caple provider in an area.  When cable has to run against other similar tv products like satellite cable tries to improve their services or at least cut prices.