> DOCSIS 3.0 is basically the same old 1980s/1990s cable with better comms protocols. It's getting to the point to where they can compete on a reasonable basis

> DOCSIS 3.0 is basically the same old 1980s/1990s cable with better comms protocols. It's getting to the point to where they can compete on a reasonable basis with single strand fiber, at a lower speed and price point. It's not just that the communications protocols got better. I think that kind of implies that the medium is at it's end, and that the difference between DOCSIS 2 @ 38Mb/27Mb and DOCSIS 3.1 @ 10Gb/1Gb is some engineers squeezing more out of copper through ingenious protocol-level optimizations. And that's mostly not the case. The big difference is that 3.1 came out a decade later and can take advantage of amazing progress made with ADCs/DACs. I think it's reasonable to claim that the driving force in internet bandwidth gains have not been because of better mediums, like fiber instead of co-ax. The easiest place to look is wireless, where the medium hasn't changed and won't change, but the speeds have exploded. 802.11ax might push 10Gbit. LTE is an order of magnitude faster than EDGE. It's easier to push more data when there's less noise on the line. But if we can work around the noise instead, it makes little sense to spend millions laying new cables.