>> where openreach fail because of the lack of technical knowledge of the vast majority of the public as to what service they should be receiving for their land line (quality &transmission) leave alone the broadband that sits on top of that line.
The problem is two-fold really :/
1) The huge investment that it would cost to provide an alternative solution, something that would probably bankrupt any company. When BT upgrades the exchanges for adsl 1, it cost many millions, but this was actually quite cheap as the relative costs basically involved installing a DSLAM in each exchange.
Rolling out FTTC would involve installing a mini dslam in every single green CAB box in the UK.
Theres something like approx 20 cabs to each of the 5500 exchanges in the UK. But it wouldnt be the cost of the dslams that would be the expensive part - it would be the digging up of roads etc (and the disruption) to lay fibre to the cabs.
BT has something like 122 million KM of copper wire (enough to go round the world 3 times) replacing this is going to be one hellish task.
When adsl was rolled out it utilised fibre that was already in place to the exchange backhauls for many exchanges.
FTTC or FTTH - well I dont see anyone being able to guarantee this to every home any time soon :/ Some countries do have faster adsl but those tend to be in denser areas where more users can soon reap the benefits of the costs, you will find that they too only do this in large towns cities.
Alternatively some countries (eg oz) a telecoms operator will roll out FTTC say for example to a new estate.. the problem there though is that the cab is restricted to that telecoms company.. therefore the users have no choice of ISP and have to go with the ISP that has invested in the cab upgrade.
2) >> what service they should be receiving from their land line.
BT are normally pretty good on this and land line (voice calls) do get priority and normally voice faults are always rectified. The problem with adsl is that no-one can ever say how adsl will perform over the copper-pair. Even those with vast amounts of technical knowledge on the subject will never be able to say for sure just how a particular line will perform, not just because of the copper itself but the fact that adsl is so susceptible to too many external influences.
No-one will invest in this huge cost - how far did cable get? and when was the last time that any cable co added anything else to their network. They only stick to the large towns and cities - any where else tough and they wont go near.