Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, has come out and said that it reckons nearly every home in the UK could hypothetically have 50MBit/s broadband in the future using copper wire, negating the need to put a fibre-optic line into every single home. This sounds great - the only caveat is though that it sounds like it needs a hell of a lot of work to become a reality. Apparently it based this assertion on an "idealised situation" where all of the right kit is in place and everything works as planned. So it's a bit like saying that in the future we'll all be wearing silver and driving flying cars - probable, but requiring massive technological changes in every part of the industry...