AT&T U-verse → Re: How is this acceptable for an install?

Honestly, there's no issue with using Cat5e today. Sure Cat6 and Cat6a is out there, but the cables are larger and stiffer, so a lot more annoying. In home usage, as long as it's quality cable, you can do 10G over Cat5e. It's also going to be pretty hard to put more data over copper without another jump in the copper diameter and a lot more shielding. Cat7 isn't a used standard no matter what marketing departments spin up (what was going to be 7 became 6a) 8 is specifically for datacenters and doesn't even use 8P8C (le sigh, RJ-45) connector.

That all being said, if I was given a choice, I'd of course choose Cat6 but it's not really that bad to be on Cat5e.

You're actually thinking of 7 in this instance, what would be considered 7 doesn't use RJ45, CAT 8 is also mostly for datacenter use as it's not rated for more than I think 40m and is a pain to terminate from what I hear due to individually shielded pairs so bulk CAT 8 isn't exactly common...I wonder what we're gonna wind up seeing when residential speeds get past 10 gig one day...will they be able to make copper Ethernet work or will there be a new standard eventually?

Anything >10G will be over fiber. Forget about cat7/8/etc...it's not happening.

Cat7 doesn't exist according to TIA. ISO says it exists, but that's really about it. So I guess you could make a cable that adheres to the ISO standards and call it Cat7, but for all intents and purposes it doesn't really exist as far as modern networking. As Cat6a gave most of what was going to be great about Cat7 and Cat8 existed, Cat7 just kind of went nowhere.

Not 100% true. There already is a standard for 25 Gbps over Cat 8, but it's limited to 30 meters instead of the usual 100 meters.

That is a patch cable standard, not a LAN standard - not only because of the short distance, but also because wall jacks aren't allowed.