>But an organization like a co-op or a government would built the lines with no concern for profitability No, they are absolutely concerned about staying in th

>But an organization like a co-op or a government would built the lines with no concern for profitability No, they are absolutely concerned about staying in the green. Apart from the federal government, local governments have to make enough money to avoid bankruptcy. Co-ops are even more constrained. This makes them even less likely to invest in risky cutting edge technology or anything approaching R&D. The only place these works are well established technologies. We’ve hit the point in the last decade where fiber is pretty well understood and future proof, so it now is low risk to lay a bunch of it and relatively cheap to upgrade endpoints as needed. Make no mistake though, the only reason fiber has reached the commoditization point is because of a bunch of very profit driven networking gear manufactures dethroning each other over who can pack the most bits over wavelength.