Britain is going to get left hopelessy behind in the race to build the Information Superhighway if British Telecommunications Plc is not allowed to do everything it would like to do, right? Come to Japan: when Suginami Cable Television Co Ltd wants to lay cable in western Tokyo, it must pay electric power companies $17 in annual rent on each of the thousands of poles it hangs cable from, Reuter reports – after it has already paid $1,500 per pole to reinforce them so they can take the extra weight – and if it wants to bury its cables, that costs it 10 times as much; permits are needed, fees to be paid for running cables along streets, and small monopolistic contractors to woo – laying cable in Suginami, a ward covering about 13 square miles involves 20 different electrical subcontractors, which have divided the area into patches to give themselves monopolies with high fees.
