With the “irrational exuberance” of the early Internet economy, speculators spent billions laying thousands of miles of fiber optic cable for backhaul, expecting Internet use would continue growing at the unprecedented rates of the late 1990s. As part of the great dot com bust of 2000, however, most of the speculators went bust, leaving so-called “dark fiber” to wait for demand to catch up.

That time, it seems, has finally come. Read more at News Republic…