The current situation is one where XGS-PON users can get 5Gbps subscriptions, whereas AON users are stuck at 1Gbps - seemingly because the telcos aren’t upgrading their point-of-presence hardware to support anything beyond 1Gbps.
I'm not sure how many home users order that, given the extra cost of 10g switches, NICs etc and then 90% of usage being via WiFi that only just makes it to 1 gbps. But it makes a lot of sense for businesses with multiple users sharing one connection.
poor souls, though can we care about the low-end first?
What is the low end? Austria has a similar problem. There are some quite old and unmaintained AON networks where people are stuck with 100MBit whereas even G.Fast copper eclipses that in some cities at this point.
from my pov: <100mbps
Sure, but it's pretty ironic if you are stuck on a 100MBit fiber connection and a few buildings down you get 300MBit over twisted pair. And the problem with AON losing support is that you often can't find an independent ISP that would actually give you service over that AON you have.
And when the poor souls on slow internet do get upgraded, AON vs GPON suddenly decides if they can get upgraded to the new higher speeds in the next ten years or not. 1gbps may be relatively slow in 10 years, but with a widely spread GPON you're not getting much more out of that, while with AON entire neighbourhoods can be upgraded by replacing a single rack in the local POP.
Except in a few places it has been exactly the other way round. AON networks in Austria for instance have been built a few years back, some random companies ended up owning that infrastructure and don't upgrade. On the other hand the incumbents have built fiber, have rolled out GPON and have in the meantime upgraded to XGS-PON whereas many on AON got stuck. It's slowly moving but very gradually.