> Our area is never going to generate the return on internet alone, and that's nice. The time scale for optical fibers' profitability is much longer than coppe

> Our area is never going to generate the return on internet alone, and that's nice. The time scale for optical fibers' profitability is much longer than copper. The media itself is passive, cheap to maintain, and easy to upgrade by lighting more fibers or moving to newer PON standards. That's why operators often overbuild the fiber count per home on purpose, something they would rarely do with copper (the time scale and upgradability being more limited by the intrinsic properties of the medium). Fibering up a mountain becomes more rational once you view it as a 40+ year asset with very low upgrade cost (for the medium itself, not the equipment connected to it). Not a 10-year ROI project like copper often was. And even more rational when you can get subsidies by governments which are usually eager to develop the economical activity in regions that otherwise would have little to no opportunity to grow significantly.