I don't think Comcast is in a position to claim victimhood, nor is EPB. However, I would be interested in seeing this type of accounting being enforced for companies that receive grants and significant tax breaks/advantages and have localized enforced monopolies, such as Comcast and several other large companies.
In what world is it a good thing that instead of accepting an offer to provide a needed service that you're in the business of, you refuse the offer and sue/lobby the requester into submission out of spite.
This world is so, so broken.
If you read what I said, Comcast, having received billions from the government to build fiber optic networks that they never built, should be under advanced scrutiny, perhaps forced to keep their internet providing monies separate from their TV cable system monies.
So they built their own, and Comcast started suing them. A lot of stupid lobby fights later, and EPB Fiber Optics became a separate company with a loan from EPB (power company). Both wholly owned by the City of Chattanooga. EPB had to keep all power monies and all internet monies completely seperate in order to operate; otherwise, they would have too much of a competitive advantage over Comcast.
For the customer, it's just EPB, but for legalize and accountants, it's two completely separate companies, and money isn't allowed to go from the power division to the internet division and vice versa.
Imagine if these conglomerates had to do similar type of accounting. I don't know if that would be a positive for the customer/consumer, but it's an interesting thought exercise. Amazon might even consider shutting down quite a bit of e-commerce if they couldn't subsidize it with AWS...