Yeah its a shame we invented things when we did, other countries who adopted our technologies at a later date have much better infrastructure, we have a 2mbit target by 2012, Japan has a 1gbit target. Then there are things like trains. Were still on 1800's technology.
Where I live, on the opposite side of the road (to where the fibre cab is, and along the whole town) is what I'm guessing is coaxial cable, lots of manholes have CATV (community access?) on them, apparently my town pioneered radio over cable in the 60's. Some of the man hole covers say Rediffusion, which was how TV was distributed anywhere not in the reach of Crystal Palace since the 1920's. Anyway Virgin isn't an option.
I was reading about FTTC and as I understood it other providers can have an ethernet handover at the exchange to their own network, and that the cabinets themselves can have cards inserted where the engineer attaches your copper to the fibre, could these cards be put in by other providers and then they rent some fibre back to the exchange, or is it more complicated? I know it can't be totally LLU'd for about 5 years anyway. I may be completely wrong.