Originally posted by: iversonyin
OP, if you have to lay blame, it has to be Wall Street and the U.S. government:
http://www.cio.com/archive/101502/et_pundit.html
Here's what I think. The government broke AT&T up in the 1980's. (so what?) Telecos are way more efficient when they are together. And guess what? All these baby Bells manage to merge back together. (so what? you ask). Throughout all the mergers, who benefit? The telcos executives? the consumers? WRONG....Investment bankers who charge them millions worth of M&A advisory fees. Those millions worth of money could've use to lay fibers, R&D, and whatever else.
Companies started to lay fibers in the late 90s as they see internet become a huge thing. But no one makes money on it because the demand was still low and Wall Street once again blame these companies for blowing too much money on fiber. The economy slowed and went into recession. Now it started to pick up again, online video, e-commerce and everything. The demand for bandwidth started to pick up....and now everyone is asking...where's the fiber?
The investment bankers ate it.
( Up until today, investment houses are still not satisfy with Verizon spending billion dollar capital expenditure on laying out those fiber. But the executives ignore them and went ahead with it. )