@Viv wrote:
So, I don't recall ever seeing Bell workers managing a copper landline from my teens to my 50s, so what's up now?
You are probably in an area where they are in better shape...
I was switched to different pairs of copper wires multiple times, had the copper wire coming to the pole to my house at least one time and could either totally lose (DSL) signal or get extremely low speeds when it was raining when I was on DSL...
All of this for around 10 Mbps download, around 0.8 Mbps upload when I was lucky...
I had two Bell supervisors come unannounced to my home to see how their installer had done his job and while they were there I asked them why fiber was available in my (relatively) small home town and not in the big city...
I always thought copper in my area was bad because fiber had been available for so long here...
They told me that it was not bad because they had switched to fiber here so long ago, they actually installed fiber here before the big city because of how bad copper cabling was/is here...
I guess everyone situation is different...