I would imagine many shareholders in BT would dispute it was 'sold cheap' as they are sitting on heavy losses.

In reply to a post by FibreBubble:

Pumping out a manhole can take a while as often you are also pumping out adjacent manholes linked by ducts. If the job requires a pump they will use a pump. If it doesn't they won't.

It is a bit of a jump to link this to any abandonment of copper maintenance.

In my experience copper maintenance is increasing as all the different players install their kit by treading on and rope burning the existing copper.

Pumping out manholes can certainly take some time, I remember a few years ago it being done by a mate's place as they got flooded, took a few hours,

Yeah, there have been a few problems since Zzoomm started digging around in the city with people losing their Openreach broadband, It has also happened the other way, Someone taking out Zzoomm, Zzoomm said another network provider, but since we only have two here. I suppose it could have been a mobile provider doing cables for their mast.
Anyway, since all this Fibre thing started, and they started to dig up the city as if the roads and pavements were not bad enough, a fair few people have complained about losing their broadband. Been ok here, but they only dug a small trench from one telegraph pole to another