is this BS? DOCSIS modems stating specific provider compatibility

[Chakravartin]

mattkime wrote:
i'm pretty skeptical of the idea of cable providers needing to bless specific cable modems. but maybe i shouldn't let my hatred of the cable providers get in the way of sound engineering reasons.

is it bs?

No.

mattkime wrote:
has anyone found an incompatibility between a given cable modem (on the DOCSIS standard) and a given service provider?

Yes.

Time Warner is famous notorious for failing to support good modems. But since they're also notoriously slow, good modems are probably wasted on them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_modem#DOCSIS

Although interoperability was the whole point of the DOCSIS project,[14] most cable operators only approve a very restricted list of cable modems on their network,[15][16] identifying the 'allowed' modems by their brand, models, sometimes firmware version and occasionally going as far as imposing a hardware version of the modem, instead of simply allowing a supported DOCSIS version as it should. From this point of view, the DOCSIS standard has failed to provide the promised practical interoperability for the end user.