One of the biggest complaints with dial-up, is that unless my company runs L2TP tunnels or some kind of IPSec, there's no way to access my work files from home. BSG's, with or without PPPoE allow the service provider to manage many seperate networks. For instance, ibm.com, bigDSLisp.net, ba.com could all be accessed from your desktop provided your service provider had agreements with these companies. This is only the first step. In 5 years you could see a consolidation, whereby there are only 2-3 facilities providers in New York, with many service companies providing value adds. Can you imagine FOX being a reseller with all of their programming offered at 500kb/s streaming! Sure there are bumps in the road. The whole PPPoE issue is only an issue because the software is still in it's infancy.

Why don't I like the static/DHCP model? Well mainly because it is so inflexible. Your router becomes the termination point, and running any advanced services reduces its ability to forward packets. The irony is that the SMS-1000 (Redback) BSG which Bell Canada and Bell Atlantic have deployed was designed by former Cisco developers. Essentially the redback emulates a bank of routers, and the customer is connected to one of those routers based on their domain name.

What will happen 3-5 years? Only backbone routers will remain packet workhorses, the access routers will be replaced by BSG's capable of "seeing" every single customer. Access providers will realize that their value is in the proximity to users, which equates to large amounts of revenue from new broadcasters. By users, I mean consumers, because the power workers will be starting to convert to mass wireless services, as yet too expensive for consumer.