Before a company can start stringing cables to bring video service to residents, it has to negotiate a contract with the city or township. Imagine having to make that agreement hundreds of times across the state and one can see why a company might be deterred from doing business.

For example, AT&T hopes to expand its high-definition, high-speed video and Internet service, U-verse, throughout the state, but in more than 1 ½ years of trying, it has succeeded in finalizing agreements with only a dozen or so local governments.

Ohio Senate Bill 117, which was approved and soon will be voted on by the House, would simplify the rules for all types of companies that provide video services.

Instead of each city making agreements with providers, the Ohio Department of Commerce would negotiate the contracts and determine the fees that would be collected on the local level, up to 5 percent of the company's gross receipts. In some cases, municipalities might end up receiving more money from the agreements than they do now.

Thirteen states, including Michigan and Indiana, have adopted such laws within the past few years, while 20 others are considering them.

Cable prices wouldn't necessarily decline, as some have claimed, but they're likely to stabilize, halting their precipitous climb over the past decade.

Texas passed a similar bill in 2005 and the cable-TV prices haven't fallen, but Texans now have alternatives that they can turn to. And choice is what Ohio's bill is intended to encourage.

Opponents argue that the state agency would be less receptive than local officials are to customer complaints. But that remains to be seen. And if problems develop, consumers will be quick to let lawmakers know.

The risk that video providers will cherry-pick customers in wealthier areas, while ignoring poorer areas, is less likely because of requirements in the bill that the companies "build out" their services into the community once they've reached 30 percent of an area's households. The bill also sets standards for companies to show that they're not discriminating against customers based on their race or income.

Ohio's regulatory structure might have worked well 30 years ago, when a telephone company was a telephone company only and a cable company was a cable company only, but those labels are obsolete. Now, telephone companies can provide video services, while cable and Internet services can provide telephone communications.

Technology is ever-changing, and companies that once provided very different services find themselves in direct competition. They should compete under one set of rules.

The House should bring Ohio telecommunications into this century.