The relentless rise of cable was anyway eroding that (three out of four new Sky subscriptions now come from cable).
Although he warned that Labour was "probably playing political games" by backing a mansion tax, the policy was "an idea whose time has come", Mr Cable told Sky News.
Broadcasters and cable TV providers including Sky, Virgin and BT are also increasingly offering on-demand services.
And it is far from clear that people will want to buy all their services from one supplier, even if they can be beamed down from the sky without having to bother with a cable or telephone line.
In an attempt to level the financial playing field for broadcasters, British regulators want British Sky Broadcasting to offer its main sports channels, Sky Sports 1 and 2, to other cable, Internet and terrestrial channels at cheaper wholesale prices.
Telecom regulator Ofcom announced Wednesday that British Sky Broadcasting, the country's biggest satellite broadcaster and main broadcast partner for the English Premier League, must offer its main sports channels, Sky Sports 1 and 2, to other cable, Internet and terrestrial channels at cheaper wholesale prices.
The company is currently involved in a legal battle with cable TV provider Virgin Media, which claims Sky is trying to "coerce" Virgin customers into switching services by denying them access to its basic channels.
Take a dramatic cable car ride up Mount Ulriken to find the sky:skraper restaurant, perched 643 metres above sea level.
One big problem: Sky Angel distributes its signals over the Internet instead of a conventional cable-TV system.
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Since Mr Baker was last in charge of Sky One there has been a proliferation of satellite, digital and cable entertainment channels, including BBC Three, Channel 4's E4 and ITV2.
In a competitive market occupied by the likes of Sky and Virgin, Mr Liassides said initially it would use the Cable and Wireless network to target the 3.2m student population.
Sky denied this, saying it had been supplying its sports channels to cable-TV companies since its inception.
Sky One viewers see the hour-long special first while viewers without cable or satellite will have to wait a few months more until it pops up in the terrestrial run on Channel 4.
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While cable was laboriously and expensively digging up Britain street by street, Sky was able to bring multichannel television to anyone, anywhere by means of a little dish and a cheap decoder.
His battles have ranged from the famed lifelong rivalry with fellow Aussie and one-time partner Kerry Packer to fierce competition with The New York Times, Time Warner Cable and most recently Google (in an interview last year with Sky News Australia, he threatened to remove stories from the search engine so readers would pay for content).
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