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The suck part of this is that they (AT&T) capitalized on providing high speed service to the millions of people who are UNABLE to get DSL because of their location. Remember, with DSL, you need to live within a certain distance of the provider or you're fucked. So if cable modem service goes down... there's gonna be a whole lot of people back on dialup. You might try satellite... probably the next best bet... but there won't be anyone to pick up cable modem service if AT&T isn't providing it. Why? AT&T owns the fuckin' cable system. It isn't just @Home Internet service running through those lines. It's also Video and Digital Telephony. And Telephony is their baby.... they won't be letting that go down. They can't. Because those lines are no longer just for entertainment... (i.e. television)... when they added Digital Telephony to the mix, it became a public utility and they are now REQUIRED to keep that up. But they also have to pay a ton of money to these cities just to be ALLOWED to operate, contributing to their costs. San Jose, CA still does not have @Home Internet because the city wanted 5 mil a year to let them in and AT&T told them to go fuck themselves. The residents are still howling about it.
In any case, I think there may be a huge market for 56k modems again real soon.
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