The two companies don't want to have to seek approval from thousands of municipalities to offer television services: I mention this story only because of the beautiful symmetrical irony. SBC and Verizon want to offer television services--and, frankly, they will provide competition that will drop the price of service in urban areas. But their competitors and opponents believe that a switch by municipal franchises to a state-wide one allows the two telcos to cherrypick service areas.
So the irony here is that the companies want to be freed from the onerous process of working with each franchising power in thousands of cases across the state. But they're perfectly happy to have each municipality required to petition them for permission to offer broadband or other services--perhaps not in Texas, but in other states in which the bills require a municipality to ask permission from an incumbent telco and wait a period for a response.
I suppose one way that municipalities can fight those sorts of laws is by banding together so that thousands of municipalities file their detailed proposals for broadband simultaneously as a sort of protest at their local self-determination being removed by the state.
Meanwhile in the state of Texas, the senate version of the telecom regulation bill has no language restricting municipal networks.