By that short term exploitation capitalism thinking neither wide spread building of power/telephone lines to houses should have been viable.
Now think how western countries would have developed without those.
One upon a time we did care about maintaining a decent infrastructure but things have been neglected. New power stations haven't been built leaving us with reduced grid capacity and the telecoms network is full of corroding copper. Private companies today have no interest in the long term (neither do politicians, really), it's all about short term gains. They'll just do the bare minimum to maintain and then run off with the money once it fails. If we really cared about future proofing Internet access in this country then contractors of new homes would install Cat 5/6 as standard with a port to every bedroom and not the cheapest Cat 3 they can find.