On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 11:28:19 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I suspect they are going to have a solution that works over 5+
miles
of copper, is easy to install (swap out the rear half of the NTE?)
and emulate analogue POTS.

its called fttp.
the cost of laying fibre is in the end less than the cost of putting in
powered repeaters.

Powered repeaters? AIUI FTTP is provided over GPON it doesn't have
powered repeaters just passive optical splits that can be stuffed
into a hole in the ground miles from the head end.

Is there a fibre equivalent to 50 pair armoured cable that is buried
direct? Miles of such cables feed many places around here, the only
over head bits being from the road to premises. Trenching for a duct
is very expensive, even ploughing in a duct isn't cheap. Fibre
doesn't like being stretched, not sure you could plough in an
armoured fibre cable.

--
Cheers
Dave.