Pundits are having fun at the expense of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who apparently referred to the DSL technology his company installed in the 1990s -- and which it is still using to serve its non-U-verse customers -- as "obsolete" at a conference earlier this week. (GigaOM has the story here.) Of course, the point of rolling out U-verse is to replace this obsolete technology. U-verse remains reliant on a form of DSL for the final connection to the home. But for the most part that's VDSL and not the ADSL/ADSL2 technology to which Stephenson was apparently referring.

As I heretically suggested in my "First Take" video blog this month (What -- you didn't know I have a video blog? Well, you should subscribe to Lightwave then, shouldn't you...), there is more life left in last-mile copper than we proponents of fiber everywhere would like to acknowledge. But I was referring to the life granted by new technologies beginning with VDSL2 and extending to node vectoring and phantom mode -- not to the sputtering technology Stephenson has rightly labeled obsolete.

That old technology has no life left in it -- but it will continue to be used, including in AT&T's network, based on what we can glean from the approaching end of AT&T's U-verse roll out. So while those lucky enough to be served by networks that will see enhancement can hope for service upgrades, those outside of the U-verse footprint -- or who reside within the footprint of any carrier that thinks ADSL is "good enough" -- are doomed to remain attached to moribund architecture that their service provider won't let die. Call it "zombie broadband," for lack of a better term.

For those in the zombie zones, perhaps the local cable company provides an alternative -- unless it has allowed its HFC networks to slip into an equally lifeless state. And if that's the case? Well, that's why muni networks are popping up across the country -- no one wants to live in the land of the zombies.