Comment by inopinatus

It isn't, but that's the norm for all internet infrastructure, both last-mile and backbone.

Since time immemorial, the gap between the amortized cost of building it, and anyone's willingness to pay for transport or transit, has been a) huge (that is, commercially insurmountable), and b) traditionally covered by one of two means:

1. Government subsidy, or

2. Attempting to offer services at the high prices necessary to recoup the investment, consequently going bust due to low volumes, selling the infrastructure for a pittance in a fire sale, and the next owner gets to offer services for prices the market is willing to tolerate. With this approach, it merely remains to find some VCs to sucker for the build phase.

It was also possible, back in the day, to run tunnels across your peers since they would announce the IXP networks at each end into their IGP, but folks got wise to that scam.

There is a variation on (2) involving anti-trust laws during M&A but it amounts to the same thing.