said by palmer73 :No terrible logic if you are trying to get your money's worth out of a modem you possibly just bought.. think about it.. then the cable company announces the next day that they are upgrading and for whatever reason your current modem doesn't work or won't give you the speeds, then you have to go out and spend another 60-100.. so his logic seems right on point to me if you look at it from a spending point of view.
His logic is terrible - this isn't rocket-science.
It's unlikely he's maxing out his cable modem as it is. Upgrading their end of the network doesn't mean the old consumer-end technology is obsolete. If anything the old modem will finally be more likely to max out thanks to updated infrastructure it'll connect to.
It's like comparing a Ferrari (docsis 3.1) and a Honda (Docsis 3.0). In the United States neither car can perform at their maximum since our infrastructure (roads) has speed limits and congestion. The Ferrari can go 190mph, and the Honda can go 120mph, but on our infrastructure they're only gonna go 70-80mph.
If you upgrade the infrastructure to allow for higher speed limits, BOTH cars benefit since NEITHER car was hitting their limits before anyways.
The same goes for Docsis 3.0->3.1. If you upgrade the infrastructure to support higher capacity, then all users benefit - even those without the latest-and-greatest.