That opens up many different cans of worms. At this very moment, I'm looking out my window and watching Time Warner's guy on the pole hooking up the neighborhood for digital cable

I know that at least here in the NYC market, third-party TW installation guys are in hot demand for wire pulling and installations, because they're theoretically "experienced." Of course, nobody said how much experience. In my last apartment, TW upgraded the building to DTV and knocked out access for several dwellings by splicing some wrong wires and ignoring some others.

Perhaps figuring out ways to market installation services as qualitative, rather than quantitative, is one thing that makes a C-tailer lose sleep. But I was just talking to the head of HTSA today, who told me, in a conversation about big entities like Verizon, TW, Best Buy, et al, getting into the custom biz -- ..."They'll learn very quickly that they don't make money on labor. It's one of the fallacies of this busines. If you try, you'll price yourself out."

True? If so, I'd be losing sleep too...