> poor souls, though can we care about the low-end first?
What is the low end? Austria has a similar problem. There are some quite old and unmaintained AON networks where people are stuck with 100MBit whereas even G.Fast copper eclipses that in some cities at this point.
Sure, but it's pretty ironic if you are stuck on a 100MBit fiber connection and a few buildings down you get 300MBit over twisted pair. And the problem with AON losing support is that you often can't find an independent ISP that would actually give you service over that AON you have.
The low end doesn't have to deal with AON vs GPON. They get DSL or DOCSIS, or if they're unlucky dial-up.
And when the poor souls on slow internet do get upgraded, AON vs GPON suddenly decides if they can get upgraded to the new higher speeds in the next ten years or not. 1gbps may be relatively slow in 10 years, but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP.
> but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP
Except in a few places it has been exactly the other way round. AON networks in Austria for instance have been built a few years back, some random companies ended up owning that infrastructure and don't upgrade. On the other hand the incumbents have built fiber, have rolled out GPON and have in the meantime upgraded to XGS-PON whereas many on AON got stuck. It's slowly moving but very gradually.
poor souls, though can we care about the low-end first?