out most of the urban and suburban areas. These networks are capable of transmitting the growing volumes of traffic generated by enterprises and residential customers. For the most part, the wireline broadband and cellular networks are operated by large conglomerates with the resources to invest large amounts of capital in their networks. Today's broadband, cellular, and cable TV providers have nationwide networks and very few competitors. This has contributed to the fact that broadband rates are higher than those in almost all countries worldwide. There are two reasons for the dearth of competition. It's enormously costly to build network infrastructure and maintain these networks. In addition, large providers have purchased their competitors. Because of the high infrastructure costs and marketing and advertising expenses, the barriers to entry for new network providers are cost prohibitive. There are however, resellers that lease network capacity at a discount and resell these services on the networks they lease. www.TechnicalPDF.com Cable TV prices have risen in part as a result of the high costs borne by providers for licensing movies, TV shows, and real-time sporting events. Providers have to bear additional expenses if they are creating original movies and television series. Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft as well as AT&T and Verizon have built huge networks of data centers to support the services they offer. They have each additionally purchased many start- ups and small companies that have developed specialized software for cloud services, advertising networks, mobile applications, and other offerings. These subsidiaries have enabled these companies to offer a larger range of services. Cable TV providers have also invested heavily in these services and have upgraded the broadband lines that connect to their subscribers. The number of choices that subscribers have for broadband services will decrease further under the AT&T and Warner Bros merger. With the FCC's approval of the AT&T purchase of Warner Bros.