There’s a little more to it. Here’s what I know.

Cable TV is a scam, but most of that has to do with the contract between the CATV provider and the content provider. Ever wonder why there are so many bullshit channels nobody watches? Companies like Viacom won’t let you just get MTV and Nickelodeon. No, you have to pay for and carry their entire fucking lineup. All the providers get nickel and dimed to death carrying stuff most people won’t more than click through.

Remember when NFL Network was brand new? Remember when it took so fucking long to get? That’s because their opening demand was that it be put on the basic tier. Pretty much everyone. For $1/mo per subscriber.

Upstream issues are technical. The HFC plant separates upstream and downstream by a cutoff frequency. The biggest impedance to getting more bandwidth at the bottom was WGBH, channel 2. Thus, the cutoff frequency was an absurdly low 40 MHz.

After it all went digital OTA, and all the analog services were decom’d, then it becomes possible to move the split to a higher frequency. But, that infrastructure takes massive amounts of time and equipment to implement. I can’t speak to where this is at.

Source: Was a network engineer at Charter when it was still regionally controlled 10-15 years ago.