Seventeen installments followed the ocean. This one turns inland, to the long-haul corridor that carries traffic between the shore and the city and that outlived every technology laid on top of it.[2] The network was not so much engineered as threaded through land other people had already cleared.[3]
Before fiber there was a continent-wide relay of microwave towers.[1] AT&T launched its microwave radio-relay skyway in 1951 as a network of 107 microwave towers designed to transmit telephone and television signals nationwide.[2] The system took three years to build, and the first call was placed on August 17, 1951.[2] It was the largest network of its kind when it opened, and unique in relying on microwaves rather than transmission wires.[1] Towers stood roughly 30 to 40 miles apart, close enough that each relay could see the next one.[1] Signals then hopped from dish to dish: the Long Lines network relayed analog data from one horn to another, with polarization of radio waves to expand the signal capacity.[1] Those horns were built rugged, designed to survive the pressure wave from a nuclear blast, because the network also carried the era's defense traffic.[1]
The towers won the argument for a while and then lost it to glass.[2] AT&T sold off most of the network in 1999, and many of the towers were abandoned, vandalized, or scrapped.[2] Some became cell sites and some became shelters, and a few still stand in fields where the only traffic left is nostalgia.[1]
The corridor itself had been cleared by someone else entirely.[3] Railroads had run their own internal communications along their tracks, first copper and then, by the 1950s, microwave radio with towers located on railway right of way.[3] Southern Pacific noticed that its private network had spare capacity and set up a commercial subsidiary, Southern Pacific Communications Company, in January 1970.[3] The network began operations in December 1973, and by July 1974 SPCC was the first non-AT&T company to provide nationwide voice telecommunications by microwave radio.[3]
Fiber came next, and it came down the same corridor.[3] In November 1978, after a clear decision by the Supreme Court in favor of competition in telecommunications, SPR sought to further expand its communications network through installing fiber optic cables along its railroad ROW.[3] The business was rebranded Sprint, and in 1983 SPR sold Sprint to General Telephone & Electric Corporation, then the largest non-AT&T telecommunications company in the US.[3] The railroad had built no network of consequence; it had sold the right to dig beside its tracks, twice over.[3]
The pattern repeated under new owners.[3] Philip Anschutz bought the railroad in 1988, and in March 1989 Southern Pacific created another telecom subsidiary on the same right of way.[3] Anschutz bought that company out in September 1991 for $55 million, and it retained full and exclusive rights of access to the railroad's right of way for installing telecommunications infrastructure.[3] It acquired the competing carrier Qwest in December 1994, and its June 1997 IPO gave it a market capitalization of $2.1 billion.[3] One railroad corridor had produced two competing long-distance networks, Sprint and Qwest.[3]
The 1990s turned the corridor into a speculative asset.[4] Global Crossing, founded in 1997, built aggressively and filed for bankruptcy in January 2002, the fourth-biggest bankruptcy in United States history.[4] In its bankruptcy filing, Global Crossing listed assets of $22.44 billion and debts of $12.39 billion.[4] Global Crossing reportedly spent $13.7 billion to build its fiber-optic network, and although it had built a worldwide network during the boom, the company never made a profit.[4]
The industry's mistake was arithmetic.[5] Everyone overestimated the demand for these networks, and there was a general presumption that the Internet was doubling every three months.[5] The money had been real even where the traffic was not: Global Crossing and its rivals raised over $1 trillion from the capital markets in equity and debt from 1998 onward.[4]
What survived the bust was the trench.[4] The glass was written down, the companies were sold for fractions of their build cost, and the routes kept sitting there.[4]
The seller, meanwhile, never left.[6] Union Pacific serves as a ready access to a single-source of railroad rights of way to connect major metropolitan cities and other geographic regions generally west of the Mississippi River.[6] The railroad says it currently operates over 33,000 miles of rights of way throughout the western two-thirds of the United States, and that it maintains a presence in the fiber optic and wireless market place by leveraging assets, including continuation as a provider of rights of way and wireless facilities.[6] The pitch has barely changed in fifty years, because the product has not changed at all.[6]
The buyers have changed.[7] Lumen, the carrier that inherited much of the 1990s long-haul plant, said in September 2025 that it is moving forward a multi-billion-dollar build with plans to add 34 million new intercity fiber miles by the end of 2028, for a total of 47 million intercity fiber miles.[7] In the company's own framing, it plans to more than double the size of that network, and it describes its intercity plant as the largest ultra-low-loss intercity fiber network in North America, with diverse routes connecting more than 50 major cities.[7] Part of that build is not new glass at all: the company counts conduit access among its 2025 milestones, having completed IRU conduit deployments across 55 additional routes and securing long-term rights to underground pathways.[7]
Verizon is selling the same asset to a very different customer.[8] On its July 2026 earnings call, the company said it had recently signed an agreement with Google, valued at over $1 billion, to use Verizon dark fiber to connect their data centers.[8] Its chief financial officer described the long-haul and metro fiber networks as a matter of customer choice, whether that's dark or lit, and added that the demand for these fiber routes that we currently have and that we are building is ultimately limited.[8]
One caveat, stated rather than smoothed over: the two figures for Union Pacific's rights of way, over 32,000 miles in a World Bank case study and over 33,000 miles on the railroad's own page today, are each reported as their source states them and never merged.[3][6] And reports that a chipmaker is buying long-haul dark fiber across the United States rest on analyst notes reported second-hand, so they are not counted here.[unverified]
Three waves have now run down the same ditches.[2] Permission to dig.
[1] 99% Invisible: AT&T's abandoned Long Lines microwave tower network"It was the largest network of its kind when it opened, and unique in relying on microwaves rather than transmission wires.""the Long Lines network relayed analog data from one horn to another, with polarization of radio waves to expand the signal capacity"
[2] WIRED: the abandoned microwave towers that once linked the US (2015)"a network of 107 microwave towers designed to transmit telephone and television signals nationwide""The system took three years to build, and the first call was placed on August 17, 1951.""AT&T sold off most of the network in 1999."
[3] World Bank / PPIAF Railway Reform toolkit: case study, Southern Pacific Railroad"by July 1974, SPCC was the first non-AT&T company to provide nationwide voice telecommunications by microwave radio""In November 1978, after a clear decision by the Supreme Court in favor of competition in telecommunications, SPR sought to further expand its communications network through installing fiber optic cables along its railroad ROW.""Finally, in 1983, SPR sold Sprint to General Telephone & Electric Corporation""This gave the company a market capitalization of $2.1 billion.""Union Pacific currently operates over 32,000 miles of ROW"
[4] US House Financial Services Committee: written testimony on the Global Crossing bankruptcy (Mar 2002)"Global Crossing filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 28, 2002, representing the fourth-biggest""Global Crossing reportedly spent $13.7 billion to build its fiber-optic network.""In its bankruptcy filing, Global Crossing listed assets of $22.44 billion and debts of $12.39 billion.""raised over $1 trillion from the capital markets in equity and debt"
[5] Knowledge at Wharton: factors behind Global Crossing's failure"Everyone overestimated the demand for these networks.""There was a general presumption that the Internet was doubling every three months."
[6] Union Pacific Railroad: Fiber Optic Overview (rights of way)"Union Pacific serves as a ready access to a single-source of railroad rights of way to connect major metropolitan cities and other geographic regions generally west of the Mississippi River.""We currently operate over 33,000 miles of rights of way throughout the western two-thirds of the United States""Union Pacific Railroad maintains a presence in the fiber optic and wireless market place by leveraging assets, including continuation as a provider of rights of way and wireless facilities."
[7] Lumen Technologies: accelerates multi-billion-dollar network expansion to meet AI demand (Sep 22, 2025)"Lumen is moving forward a multi-billion-dollar build with plans to add 34 million new intercity fiber miles by the end of 2028, for a total of 47 million intercity fiber miles.""we plan to more than double the size of our U.S. network""with diverse routes connecting more than 50 major cities, Lumen operates the largest ultra-low-loss intercity fiber network in North America."
[8] Verizon Q2 2026 earnings call transcript (Jul 24, 2026)"We recently signed an agreement with Google, valued at over $1 billion, to use Verizon dark fiber to connect their data centers.""Clearly, our long-haul and metro fiber networks, whether that's dark or lit, depends on the customer.""The demand for these fiber routes that we currently have and that we are building is ultimately limited."