If so, its really a matter of equipment and network design (in addition to services design) and not neccessarily replacing the HFC plant. Which by-the-way will also be a huge endeavour but not of the same scale that would involve replacing HFC plant…

Any opinin ojn which equipment companies are better positioned to leverage this situation?

I worked for cable during the huge build out of the 1970-1980. The Verizon FTTP build out reminds me of the good old days. The cost on installation will go down as the equipment improves and the techs get better trained.

The real saving is going to be in plant maintenance, especially when compared to coax plant. The fiber is noise free. Cable system are pledged by noise problems and their system problem calls are months behind. The problems have long cleared by the time the techs look at them, but by then customer has had to endear poor intermittent service.

This is about survival of the fittest just like in the jungle. The customer demands the very trouble free high bandwidth service for his hard earned dollars.

http://www.sltrib.com/search/ci_4182192

BUT, and this is a big BUT, I cannot imagine why profit seeking corporations would want to deploy a retail fiber infrastructure across entire countries when they can achieve the same by using *existing* copper.

The critical flaw in your argument resides in your assumption that copper is limited. It is not. In college, I had a 2.4 kb/s modem. By the time I got to 56 kb/s, I reliably read everywhere that limits had been reached. ISDN too was thought to be a last gasp. We are now at VDSL with >20mb/s. The Industrial Accident theory applies here too, just as it does with Microprocessors or Storage. I would be astonished if copper just stayed still.

Fiber too will get better/faster/cheaper, and I would wager that the performance ratio between copper and fiber is likely to stay fairly static, and that the same could be said of pricing.

Basically what I am describing is a situation where the cost, performance and installed base characteristics of two technologies (fiber + copper) will largely decide how the are deployed. As long as copper remains cheaper, not-as-fast-but-fast-enough and generally more highly penetrated than fiber, then it will also likely remain the last mile technology of choice. Fiber will be more prevalent in the backbone.

Think of it another way: the account you wrote of your FIOS screamed of one thing: COST. I counted two (trained) guys (?), a truck, some fancy gear, all mobilised for at least a couple of hours on the spot + some travel time (1 hour?). So I am thinking Verizon has at least a couple of hundred $ of CPE at your place (that will depreciate) and has spent well north of $1000 to install your gear. Now do the same back of the envelope calculation with DSL, and I bet it will be 1) much cheaper and 2) achiever the same as your FIOS install (e.g. http://www.bethere.co.uk).

All this to say that of all the FTTx variants, FTTH has to be the most ridiculous and least likely to succeed. Mixing faster and more expensive fiber with cheaper and slower copper is likely to remain the most likely combo for some time to come.