Small scale digging & semi-automated specialized trenching equipment makes for smaller crews, smaller capital investment, and less time to dig a given trench. (

Small scale digging & semi-automated specialized trenching equipment makes for smaller crews, smaller capital investment, and less time to dig a given trench. (Did you know that there's a delightfully named machine called a Ditch Witch?) For another, the equipment you need to support a given level of bandwidth has dropped orders of magnitude in cost. For another, endpoint hookups are faster and easier, we know much better how to splice fiber faster and cheaper. etc etc... it takes a real lack of imagination to claim it's the same as when we put in electricity and telephone networks or even early fiber or copper networks.