Furthermore, the needs of the community are different now. Suppose you hired a carpenter to work on your house, on the conditions that he hauled away old materials and paints the unfinished wood when done. Two different jobs have two different needs. In Massachusetts, town and city officials hate it. They want the freedom to negotiate whatever terms they want, and there's no good reason for a state legislature to take that away.
Laws also tend to lead to lawsuits.
The state of competition in the cable industry is one more indication that the Telecommunications Act is not having the effect it promised to have. The succession of mergers in communications industries was supposed to be balanced by increased competition among the conglomerates that emerged. But we're getting mergers without competition. It doesn't help when companies manipulate the legislative and regulatory process to preserve their fiefdoms. Public interest programmers, operating on shoestring budgets to bring information to their constituencies, fear the shake-ups that come with competition.