Just a couple of points in response. Not arguing your points, just clarifying your points:
For high speed overkill - it all depends on what you do from your home. Both DH and I work in IT and often work from home. We wouldn't be able to do it without that speed. And DH runs a web site from home where he frequently uploads large volumes of data. There are days when our speed isn't fast enough.
Antique phone equipment - Absolutely there are portions of that infrastructure that is old. If you live in a rural area, you can bet they are running you on old equipment. But the cable infrastucture was build to deliver TV, not broadband services, so their equipment has been repurposed. And if you live in a rural area, you probably don't have cable service because they won't bother building out there.
Time to restore service - all bets are off with disaster outages. Telephone companies have huge footprints in service areas, where cable providers have a smaller area to cover. Cable companies for the most part have buried cable, where phone companies lines are often overhead and more easily affected by disasters. When a huge area goes out, there's simply an exponentially larger area and more equipment to fix.
My zeal isn't because I work for a phone company. I've lived in rural and semi-rural areas for the last 17 years where cable isn't offered which ticks me off that I don't even have that option. And I've seen how both industries have grown since the onset of broadband services, with the disparate FCC policies applied to them. Even if didn't work in the industry, I would side with a company who is the underdog in the fight. The FCC has stacked the deck against phone companies.
