> Take, for example, the over-optimistic fiber build-out that
> essentially terminated in 2000 - it's taken 16 years to use all that
> up....
>

That sounds like it was in the right ballpark.  Trenching is so expensive,
only doing it every couple decades sounds like a reasonable plan (even
better if you trench conduit that you can run replaceable cables in (which
is what AT&T did when they took U-Verse into the Santa Cruz mountains).

-Aaron