Telco's are taking their legal battle to congress now. Congress may be too little too late for telephone companies battling with cable.

"In the past two weeks, lawmakers have announced plans for three different bills [which] ... would allow Verizon, SBC, bellsouth and other phone companies to add television service without getting permission from local regulators, as long as they pay franchise fees and comply with other requirements that municipal officials typically demand of cable companies ..."

City governments are similarly opposed because they don't want to relinquish any authority in setting cable-franchise fees and dictating schedules for ripping up roads and laying fiber communications lines into the ground.

Any phone company could cut the time needed for negotiating a franchise to a month or two by agreeing to the same terms as the local cable company. But few phone companies will take that option because they would be required to serve an entire market, not just the most profitable neighborhoods.

"Their big objection to complying with existing franchise deals is the market- wide--buildout requirement," says Paul Gallant, media-policy analyst for Stanford Washington Research Group.