Horror stories abound on installations botched by company bureaucracy or incompetence, especially with DSL installed by ILECs. Home PCs are seldom part of a network infrastructure and as a result NIC cards are rarely found in home machines. This is hardly the basis for building a robust broadband digital infrastructure. At the same time this distorts the business model where consumer purchase of the modem limits the revenue stream from the modem. Ideally a broadband provider would like to collect use fees on the modem over a long period of time as a continuing revenue stream in addition to the service and portal charges.
Executives also speak of the potential of a virtual unlimited upsell for the broadband customer.
Unfortunately the reality is quite different. We expect that just getting a truck roll is a major barrier in the market. Thus, the quagmire is a circular market cycle between poor installation performance, high end user total cost, and lack of compelling user scenarios. This is not a problem easily addressed because of its complexity and the fact that it spans many aspects of the food chain in a broadband network. Ultimately how this will be broken rests with the consumer finding broadband as a significant value to their personal lives.