In (rec.radio.amateur.misc), Robert Casey wrote:

Most fibre optic cables use railroad right of ways. The railroad
already exists and has direct paths from one city or town to
another, and is one entity for the firbre company to lease from. And
the railroads like having the extra income. They bury the cable off
to one or both sides of the tracks and railroads are used to heavy
equipment work being done. Railroads need communications for their
signals and keeping track of where the trains are and such anyway.
So they throw in extra fibre for that when installing the other
fibre. And from those towns fibre is strung along telephone poles to
reach that place out in the sticks. Imagine a high speed 'net link
to Ted Clampet's shack he had before he got his oil money.... "Wee
Doggies, look at this porn"..... :-)

An increasing amount of fiber is being buried on (or under) highway
right-of-way. I know; I work for a state department of transportation,
and we worked deals to get some very nice free bandwidth out of the
fibers along some Interstates. I expect we'll be able to do the same
for fibers buried along federal and state highways, once the carriers
recover from the dot-bomb and start building bandwidth out again.

--
Mike Andrews

Tired old sysadmin