[WillPS]

My exchange has Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone as LLU providers.

All Openreach-serviced customers have an Openreach connection to the exchange (be it copper, fibre or copper to the cab and fibre the rest of the way). That's the 'local loop' as I understood it.

In the exchange, the connection hits Sky's equipment if it's a Sky customer (regardless of line type), Vodafone equipment if it's a Vodafone (or Vodafone reseller) customer or TalkTalk equipment if it's a TalkTalk (or TalkTalk reseller) customer. All other customers stay on Openreach lines and equipment until their connection hits their ISP higher up the chain.

It sounds like you're saying the last part is only true if it's a standard copper-to-the-exchange connection?

Edit - yep - bit of reading reveals I'm totally mistaken on that. Thanks for correcting.

Still, going back to the original point - given the similarity of hardware between Plusnet, EE and BT - surely they could just unlock the routers and transfer customers over between providers (like you can already do if you switch from BT to EE or Plusnet).