said by pnh102:said by Matt:Aside from FiOS and surgical DOCSIS 3.0 deployments, yes, we're dealing with 10-year old technology. AT&T is milking DSL and Time Warner is still DOCSIS 1.1.
And why are these bad things? There is absolutely nothing wrong with milking an existing technology to its usable limits.
said by Matt:I have no idea about your corn analogy, but I doubt it's even remotely similar.
Ethanol as a motor vehicle fuel exists because the US government decided that it should. It costs much more to make than ordinary gasoline and is less powerful. Because it also requires a lot of corn to produce, it raises demand, and therefore the price, of corn and anything else made with corn.
I mention it because any government-mandated standard for broadband will have the same result. My guess is that a lot of smaller ISPs will simply throw in the towel because they won't be able to deploy to mandated standards, and the bigger ISPs will simply buy themselves protections in any standard that is mandated.
Ethanol is not the ubiquitous fuel. So that analogy doesn't mean much to me. If the government decided to subsidize corn farmers even further by requiring ethanol, so what? They mix it with gasoline here in NC in the winter months to reduce emissions. So there is a use for other than usage as a lone fuel.
