This change should take place before the end of the year. But all the V.90 modems being sold today are field-upgradable, so you just go to the modem company's Web site and load a patch to upgrade the modem to the final standard. 3Com has quickly brought out a V.90 modem that's backward-compatible with its old 56K modems. So you can still dial up those X2 ISPs and get faster speeds. Buyers of older 56K technology should note that their modems are probably upgradable, too.
Few people take advantage of how easy it is to upgrade a modern modem.
As before, though, the likelihood of actually achieving 56K is remote. Look for typical throughput of 40K to 46K from the downlink. Speeds like this are still nothing to sneeze at.