"he gets pings of ~35ms and download speeds of ~25 Mbps"
Frankly, it just means that BT is giving him crappy service by slowing down the network stream somewhere - as probably some intermediate node can't handle the traffic. I've seen companies re-using outdated equipment on less "privileged" nodes when more "privileged" ones are updated, to contain costs.
The huge difference is one fibre cable is laid out (and it is the correct type of cable, I hope), it doesn't need to be redeployed to achieve higher speeds. And with copper it could get even less than 25Mb - and just because the copper technology can't sustain them at longer distances.
Still, pings are a matter of what you ping - and what route the packet takes.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
