My understanding is that a lot of people had bad experience with FTTP/FTTH when it was first rolled out in the US, because the telco would cut the copper cables

My understanding is that a lot of people had bad experience with FTTP/FTTH when it was first rolled out in the US, because the telco would cut the copper cables that lead to the house. This meant that once you switched to FTTP/FTTH, you had no way to switch back to ADSL (or that it was prohibitively expensive to do so). In my neighbourhood in Canada, FTTN is quite common, and speeds of 25Mbps/10Mbps and 50Mbps/10Mbps are commercially available using VDSL to cover the last mile between the node and the home (and this is well below the theoretical capabilities of VDSL, since the telco is also using VDSL to deliver the TV component of a triple-play package ). While a new modem is still required, since the last mile is still copper, it means that switching from ADSL to FTTN+VDSL and back is easy (alleviating concerns that a FTTH provider might suddenly jack up prices knowing that you can't switch back to ADSL). I believe the local telco has started rolling out FTTH to select areas, but: - it's available in far fewer neighbourhoods than FTTN - the monthly fee is much more expensive (think $150 CAD/month, compared to $40/month for FTTN) - there's an expensive installation fee for FTTH - the bandwidth cap on FTTH doesn't increase proportionally with bandwidth compared to FTTN or ADSL; the caps are so low that you're basically on usage-based billing for all usage above the base monthly fee