21.   Customers get their television service through the Nynex line, then choose which cable provider to take after that.

22.   Currently, foreign companies cannot own more than one-third of Japanese cable providers.

23.   Customers will have choices they have not had in picking cable providers.

24.   Even if compared with cable providers, a merger of EchoStar and DirecTV would create a formidable pay-television company.

25.   For as phone companies are looking to carry cable television transmissions over their wires, so are cable providers seeking to do battle over the dial tone.

26.   For other local companies, such as cable provider Cox Communications, the deal changes the competitive landscape and will likely prompt them to reexamine their strategies.

27.   However, AOL wants to crack the high speed Internet access market over cable wires, since it is losing customers to MediaOne and other cable providers.

28.   In Atlanta, dominant cable provider MediaOne plans to offer video-on-demand later this year but has no plans for Internet TV.

29.   It would mark a retreat for TCI International, a unit of the largest U.S. cable provider, which earlier this year considered boosting its stake in Cablevision.

30.   Local cable providers wondered if the channel would appeal to a nationwide audience, like the Discovery Channel, because its appeal is limited.