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Because every household has copper phone cables run to it already. You can run fiber to the trunk and have high speed communication using existing copper lines.

> XG-FAST can help operators accelerate FTTH deployments, taking fiber very close to customers without the major expense and delays associated with entering every home

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How many of those existing copper cables are of high enough quality that they can support anywhere near that speed though? The copper lines in my parents' house are so bad they can't even support a second phone line, much less decent networking speeds.

The copper running to most homes is up to 100 years old and heavily degraded, most houses can't even get ADSL1 speeds let alone ADSL2 or vDSL

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