During the dot-com boom, fiber was being laid as fast as they could dig the trenches. Last I read a while ago, there is still a huge amount of unused "dark fiber" out there.

Actually, even closer to home, you may be surprised. When I bought my first house last year, I thought I'd finally order Verizon's fiber optic Fios broadband. Unfortunately, Verizon doesn't serve my area. Bummer. So I just ordered AT&T DSL and mentioned the Fios thing to the technician that came to my house. To my suprise, he said that AT&T has fiber optic right up to the junction box two blocks away. Unfortunately, it's that "last mile" that is--and probably will remain for a long time--the bottleneck between my house and that fiber optic line.