Its not entirely BT's Fault.
Back in the days when BT was the property of the GPO. in effect a government owned company. When the real investment work that was needed to be done in the late 70's and early 80's
(before we sold it to ourselves) the GPO was massively over staffed. and because it was gov. owned it was a near impossibility to streamline the business. what profits were made were spent on paying wages for staff that just were not needed,,,
after we sold BT to ourselves, and there was the massive staff cut backs and system x was developed and sold worldwide, the internet was not even thought about,,\ copper wire was fine for the last mile, fax machines worked fine telex worked fine..... BT became profitable !!! woo hoo..
It was at this time that fiber to home should have been installed for the future expansion of digital networks... but packet switching networks were still in infancy... and to ask share holders to part with cash for something that at the time was not needed or for anyone to even give a good reason why it may be needed in the future, except for this pipe-dream of linking computers together,,,,
Other countries at this time, there telcoms was near enough non existent, except for in large urban areas... it was not a matter of replacing copper with fiber, it was a matter of what should be installed in the first place. and as fiber was the cheaper option to install, they now benifit from the advantages....
in other countries, as new towns and cities are built, they take a tight control over the background infrastructure,,,, there is no digging up of roads to keep adding stuff,,, its all done in the design of the city... we do not have that luxury in this country. we have to work around whats already there.... and its a nightmare..... go to your library and get a map of all crap buried under your street....
its all about cost and if its worth the investment... if it costs 30bn to replace the last mile then in ten years the shareholders will will want 50bn back... if they don't, the cash will have made them more money sitting in a bank account... so before they will stump up the cash, they want to know they are going to get it back... if offcom restrict what they are allowed to do, that return is not going to happen.
in short, bt inherited a massively out dated network and for the last 25 years have tried to modernise as best they can, while wearing the ofcom handcuffs. so it gets to the point where they want to break free...investors ans shareholders dont want to stump up cash.... i dont blame them for playing hardball with ofcom...