Sorry but that's far from the whole story.

Both BSB and Sky were losing so much money they would have folded within months.

BSB and Sky merged so that cost synergies meant that the company as a whole could trade without folding, though it still nearly did.

If they hadn't had merged satellite services would have been set back for a long time , they might not have even been around.

Not that clearly. I understood they were talking about this country with the switchover of old analogue NTL/Telewest to digital services but ok fair enough I get what you're saying.



no, sorry.... If there is no cable in my area now, then of course it may have been phased out at some point in the past. I was talking about the present. I am guessing that the CATV markings in the street suggest that it once was (analogue) cable available.



OK cool. But take a look at what I'm saying, I'm not really that inconsistent.



I may be wong in my understanding but in other countries, doesn't the same cable come through the same pipe? Just provided by different providers? Like a BT phone line, or Gas/Electric only has one actual supply but many competing suppliers? Correct me if I'm wrong though...

Not factually, just effectively!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British...e_Broadcasting

In 1990 both companies were beginning to struggle with the burden of massive losses. The failure of BSB in November 1990 led to a merger, which was in effect a takeover by Sky - quality programming and superior technical quality was beaten by shrewd, aggressive marketing and pragmatic capital expenditure. The new company was called British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) but marketed as Sky, Marco Polo House was emptied (most staff were made redundant with a few moving to Sky's HQ), BSB's channels were largely scrapped in favour of Sky's and the Marco Polo satellites were withdrawn and eventually sold in favour of the Astra system (Marcopolo I in December 1993 to NSAB of Sweden and Marcopolo II in July 1992 to Telenor of Norway. Both companies had already one HS376 in orbit at the time). The merger may have saved Sky financially; despite its popularity, Sky had very few major advertisers to begin with. Acquiring BSB's healthier advertising contracts and equipment apparently solved the company's problems. Ironically, Sky News began transmitting services to Scandinavia from the Thor satellites.

...

Technically, two BSB channels still exist. The Movie Channel kept its name until 1997, being briefly rebranded as "Sky Movies Screen 2", Sky Moviemax and then Sky Movies 2. The channel is now Sky Movies Premiere +1. Sky Sports 1 is what was formerly The Sports Channel, rebranded as "Sky Sports" after the merger.

The cable for Virgin is separate from the cable for BT, owned by Virgin and not supplied for use by anybody else (as opposed to BT Openreach who own/manage the BT line).

But, following your example, you can't buy the gas for your cooker from one company and the gas for your central heating from another company through the same pipe. Likewise you can't buy an ADSL service for TV services from one company and ADSL services for Internet Access from another company.

Having said that, though, there is a possible development that hasn't been mentioned yet. BT only offer BT Vision via BT Broadband but there has been a suggestion that they might offer this via other ISPs. Likewise, Homechoice were investigating offering their service via other companies (Tescos were mentioned if I recall correctly). I think both solutions, though, would involve supplying their service to the ISP who then package it as their own service so you still would not achieve your original aim and you would still have to ask other ISPs why they are not using this facility.