——————God forbid the ISP has to build out its infrastructure more to accommodate the information the ISP’s paying customers request.-—————
These people are as dirty as h*#l.
Isn’t something like 90% of the nation’s fiber still dark?(left unused, unlit)
(I forget the proper lingo)
Fiber is cheap, but it's extremely expensive to install, so usually far more than is needed is installed while the ditches are open, creating a huge overcapacity. Dark fiber mainly refers to the overcapacity in addition to individual lines not being used. There was a fiber laying frenzy during the dotcom boom, so there's a lot of extra fiber cable around. In addition, newer technologies have vastly increased the amount of data that can be transmitted on the same fiber, essentially creating more dark fiber. I don't know about 90%, but it is significant for sure.
Anyway, I know Google's been buying up a lot of dark fiber to use within their own network. Level 3 Communications, which carries the Netflix traffic, has been buying an obscene amount of it.