By 2002, telecom had buried roughly 80 million miles of fiber in the US, and only about 5% of it was lit.
The other 95% sat dark, written down to cents on the dollar.
Then YouTube, Netflix, and the cloud ran on that "wasted" glass for a decade.
I keep that number in my head watching the GPU buildout.
The bubble that strands the capital and the substrate that powers the next era are usually the same object, just photographed at different times.