Well, really there is only one cable tv company now in the UK and that's Virgin Media. They operate in Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as all over the UK. Over the years, all the uk cablecos merged to form three companies ntl, telewest and cable & wireless communications and these eventually came together to form virgin. Virgin has about 60ish headends in the UK (spiderplant will know the exact number) and a couple of Super Headends too.
Smallworld is the only other UK cableco, but they're tiny operating in the Morecambe area.
As you probably know, BT via their Openreach unit, has been installing fibre to the cabinet services all over the UK, this is still ongoing and there have been major recuitment drives by BT/Openreach for engineers.
Virgin and BT are the only companies now in the UK with a residential network of any size, of course there are lots of B2B networks too.
There are lots of telcos installing fibre optic cables in villages and towns in areas where BT has shown no interest. Have a look at the site below for all the lastest news on that and what telcos are doing what:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com
BT Openreach are doing lots of tests at the moment. They are to launch a fibre-on-demand service in the next few months. It is expected that at least a few companies, Sky and BT themselves, perhaps Talktalk will launch some sort of linear IPTV service over the fibre. They are testing multicasting now.
Obviously, as you say, there are lots of companies, but if its specifically cable tv related then your options are small.
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