Cable Companies

There are many cable companies around the world that provide cable television services to consumers. Cable television is a type of television broadcasting system that brings television programming to viewers via the use of radio frequency signals. The radio frequency signals are transmitted to the television sets in the viewer's home themselves through the use of fixed optical fibers or coaxial cables. This is as opposed to traditional television broadcasting systems that instead transmit television programming via an over the air method t. Traditional television broadcasting sends signals to the televisions via radio waves which then require the viewers to have an antenna to pick the signals up.

Today's cable companies are not strictly services only offering television. Nowadays, cable companies often also provide telephone services, radio programming services, high speed Internet services, and other types of services and features that are not specifically related to television itself. Coaxial cables are capable of the bi directional carriage of signals on top of the transmission of large amounts of data, which means that cable TV companies often try to offer as many added services as they can to make the most of the hardware they already have in place. Since the cable television signals themselves only use a small portion of the bandwidth that the coaxial cables can actually handle, this then leaves plenty of space for cable Internet, cable telephone services, wireless services and more. These can use both unlicensed and licensed spectrum. When browsing through offerings from cable companies, you will often find something listed that is called a "triple play." This usually refers to getting cable television, cable telephone and cable Internet services all in one package, and is a popular option for consumers using many different popular cable companies.

US Cable Companies

In the United States, there are tons of cable companies out there for consumers to choose from. While not every area or region of the United States will have the same cable providers available to you to use, you will still have a good selection. The top five cable companies currently operating in the United States (per statistics from 2008) are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, and Cablevision.

Satellite TV Providers

Other popular television providers are not cable companies at all, but rather satellite TV providers. Satellite TV services give consumers that do not like the options available in the way of cable companies in their region another option for getting high quality TV programming in their homes. Satellite TV providers often also provide Internet services and more. The current most used satellite TV companies in the United States are Dish Network and DirecTV.

Whether you choose satellite TV or a cable company, as a consumer in the United States you have a lot of options to select from to ensure that you get the channels, programming and other features that you want, and you have a wide range of price points for those packages to choose from, as well, so you also get something that suits your budget.