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> there has been a 25GbaseT spec for 10 years that no one has bothered to manufacture

because dealing with fiber is easier than cat8 copper. unless you want poe there is very little reason to use base-t.

I think the larger point is that dumping baseband and going with OFDM/etc over wider spectrum allows those cat5e runs that are rolling off at 600Mhz (or whatever) and the super clean cat8/whatever to coexist with bad cables, bad termination, etc. The spec could easily be built for say 50Gbit, and fall back to 2.5Gbit/etc on 200M chicken wire runs.

Then the argument about "but we have to pull more cable to guarantee those speeds" or "It consumes to much power" all go away, and instead the analog side gets a bit more complex, but given the $100+ phy's in 10GbaseT the argument that it drives cost is bogus when triband Wifi7 USB nic's are $30.

but why bother? basic fiber is dirt-cheap and optics are not that expensive either.

POE and existing wiring, and terminating copper on the lower end is dead simple for the kinds of people who wire houses, being able to run on cat3 phone cable would be even more of a bonus. There is a market for attaching APs, security cameras, and a load of other stuff on copper.

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