I wouldn't want to be seen as coming in defense of Telus's poor video quality, but the comparison is not really fair. Verizon FIOS is regarded as the best TV delivery service because it is entirely over optical cables. It is only available in limited number of areas in the US, and it looks like Verizon is not expanding it anymore.
Time Warner, if I'm not mistaken, is cable. You don't have to go to the states to see excellent HD quality over cable, you can see the same on Shaw here.
The only "apple to apple" comparison you can make is between Telus Optik and AT&T U-verse. They use the same technology. I bet the comparison would be in favour of AT&T as well, because, as already discussed in this thread, Telus' issues have nothing to do with the limitations of the technology, but are entirely due to their particularly bad implementation. My personal guess is that the high ranking executive responsible for Optik TV is a guy with decades of experience in finance and telephony and with less than amateur knowledge about TV.
Also, Netflix's advantage is not exactly the variable bitrate, but because their streams have been encoded in multiple passes before streaming, not in real time. Still Netflix's quality, although outstanding for the bitrate and in all respects better than Optik TV, is not the best. Free OTA HD can deliver better quality than any other service I've seen, bested only by Blu-ray.