In a discussion on LinkedIn, Michael Elling wrote, "Supply follows demand not the other way around." Exactly. I've been making this argument for years. Too many communities get tied up debating how to improve backhaul in and out of the community when they should be pumping intra-community demand by adding shared infrastructure and driving up demand. That local demand will attract investment to build more capacity to the community. It's not a guaranteed strategy in all cases, but it's already happening all over the country--but not in a good way.
The problem right now, and Blacksburg is an excellent example, is that we are seeing micro-monopolies developing as fiber providers target low hanging fruit in a community, sign up unsuspecting businesses and institutions onto long term contracts, then use the contracts to finance a fiber build. Presto...wherever that fiber goes, the odds of any other fiber provider adding more fiber is driven close to zero. So instead of having the community under the thumb of one monopoly provider, we now have portions of the community divided up, each under the thumb of smaller providers, each provider fat and happy in their own little monopoly zone.
Shared infrastructure mitigates this once and for all.