Well, that is ONLY true if all the line from the "central" is copper. Verizon and others have and are still running fiber, which removes ALL distance barriers.
Just an FYI.
True enough... :-) But the OP did say "in this case copper wired to the house". Do these other ISPs in the US actually run fiber to the houses? Or just to the central office? I know in Canada - with the exception of new buildings - most ADSL is copper wire (the original phone wiring) at the minimum from the central office to the customer. Same goes for where I live in Europe... ADSL is generally speaking... still copper wire for the last and most critical segment of the connection.. and also the most susceptible segment. Ooops... this is getting way off topic. This weekend I plan on trying out the Beta 1 of 10.2. I've got a nice squeaky clean partition ready to go... hope it's as good as people are indicating.... I've got confidence :-) C