ast became the undisputed king of the hill, requiring an FCC rule change to be allowed to have such a large share of nationwide cable subscribers. Not only that, but by 2002, the bulk of network upgrades had been completed. Comcast had grown from being a modest-sized regional provider in the early 1990s to being one of the country's top media conglomer- ates a decade later. It did this, in large part, by exercising what turned out to be a rare skill, knowing when not to make an acquisition in an overheated market. Competitive Access Providers, the Costly Way to Local Competition Overbuilding Was Often a Costly Disaster The Cable Act of 1992 prohibited exclusive franchises. Local franchising authorities, such as cities and counties, were allowed to impose certain obliga- tions on franchised cable providers, but they had to allow new companies to apply for franchises, even if one was already in place. This did not happen very often for the simple reason that the economics of overbuilding usually stank. The cost of building a cable network is largely based on the number of plant miles required. The cost per home passed is thus a function of residential density. But the cost per subscriber is a function of the cost per home passed and the take rate. If an incumbent cable operator serves 60% of homes passed and an overbuilder takes one third of its business away, it will still have only half as many subscrib- ers per mile as the incumbent. But given the ridiculous prices that were being paid for cable systems dur- ing the boom, overbuilding was tempting. A new HFC network could be built, in the late 1990s, for perhaps $20,000 to $30,000 per mile, in a suburban area with aerial (not underground) utilities. So if an overbuilder signed up 10 homes per mile, it was coming out ahead of, say, AT&T. But that did not translate to profits. A handful of companies did invest heavily in overbuilds; for the most part, they lost money. One of them, West Point, Ga.-based Knology, was a spin-off of ITC Del- tacom, originally the smal