But as you pointed out, they don't need to be sneaky about it.
They can outright say "we need to upgrade you to fibre" and/or increase the price of copper service. They're not even in the wrong to do that given it will cost more to maintain a copper service and the retiring of the copper network is inevitable, though probably not happening for quite some time still (at least on a national scale).
In reply to your post about lightening, the chance of lightning hitting phone cables is a chance in a million, I live on a large hill and my TV aerial is pretty high, or it used to be before it was lowered to make space for the wireless broadband unit, never been hit in the 20 years I have been here. Could it happen? maybe.
The aerial is disconnected, but the end of it is still on the window sill inside.
Ok, as for the fibre thing, at some point yes we will be forced/pushed/bribed to go to it and at that time I may already be using it, but at this moment in time I feel I don't need to change to fibre.
This is how I see it
I have 36Mb/s on FTTC, working fine, for an ok price, People say I can go for FTTP and keep the speed I am on and I know this, but my view is, why go through the hassle of having fibre installed just to keep to the same speed? If I am going to go through that rigmarole, then I may as well go for something faster and get something out of it. Then it comes back to me spending more for something I don't need.
Can you see what I am getting at?
At some point I may change or be made to change, but not yet,
Adrian
Desktop machine Ryzen powered with windows something or other.
Plusnet FTTC