No QAMs about it

If you live in a Verizon town, chances are you can't avoid that FiOS commercial with the little kid babbling about how +20 dB hot his true QAM is (even if, like me, you live in an "inner city" neighborhood that will get FiOS in, oh, 2107 or so).

Not being a fiber-optics guy, of course I have no idea what the kid and the not-the-cable guy are babbling about. But that's what the Internet is for, so I quickly found a post by Tom Wright-Piersanti that translates the entire commercial. For example:

All of these wavelengths are totally industry standard, and any provider will use the exact same. So why did Verizon feel like they had to run them off quickly here? Because they are big numbers, and when said in rapid succession they create the illusion that something confusing is happening and your only reaction can be “Ooh, fancy, me wanty numbers.” Don’t get sucked in, remember that all these numbers have no real meaning and are nothing out of the ordinary.

And yes, he explains "true QAM" and why it's truly nothing out of the ordinary these days - even people who can't get FiOS might already be all QAMmed up.

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