peterl1365 said:
Um, I think you're a tad confused here. DirecTV and Dish offer local channels entirely via satellite. The TV station *might* have a fiber connection to a DBS uplink facility, but that is not considered a right of way.
this what an engineer said "Both fiber back to the west coast for uplink." and "Both Dish and Direct TV have separate headends, and most locals are picked up off-air." something else to note if there head end is to close to where a station signal shoots over it's antenna they will ALSO use fiber from the station to there head end.
there is nothing tad confused about it. still either way they use a "right of way", there is no other way to spell it out.
I think "right of way" generally refers to areas allocated in each neighborhood for underground or aerial distribution to EACH home. This entails access along many miles of public streets. These all have to be documented and monitored so that other public works projects do not disturb any existing wiring (hence, you have to call Dig-Alert before doing ANY digging on your property).
An uplink from a TV station to a head end center is in fact a right of way issue, but it is strictly point to point, and does not even have to be a dedicated connection. I imagine that the parties involved could simply lease a connection from their local phone company or other backbone providers (e.g. MCI, global crossing, etc).
The fact of the matter is that, as far as the consumer is concerned, satellite services do not require any right-of-way, and thus are exempted from franchise fees. If the TV station or DBS uplink center has to pay for right-of-way (in whatever form), then that is just a cost of doing business and is not (directly) passed on to the consumer.
By the way, don't you think cable companies have the same issues? In fact, cable companies get most of their signals via satellite. So it wouldn't surprise me if cablecos and DBS operators, despite being competitors, share many of their costs of terrestrial signal transmission.