In Germany in 1981 chancellor Helmut Schmidt pushed for fiber infrastructure. Project was started and entered planning phase.There are a number of reasons why I do not own/use a 'smart' phone, the primary being control. A smartphone is a hardware blob that runs multiple binary blobs. The user is greatly isolated and has only the smallest degree of control that the manufacturer or app developer grants. For me, this is entirely contrary to the concept of FOSS, its promise always having been access to the code which also implies control.
@jgreco What is/was 'Eternal September'?
The internet was "becoming a thing" in around 1991, even GNOME had its logo discussion around then. I would guess that the explosion of commercialism on the internet was happening near 2000, up to then they still mailed out those shiny AOL coasters. By 1994 or so I had largely left BBSes behind in favor of a shell account from a local isp. We all hoped and wished, back in those imperfect modem days, that fiber-optic service would be rolled out, but we were "gifted" broadband instead. Now they are trying to get fiber-optic rolling *finally* but they may as well be crawling up Everest bare kneed.
In the next election he sadly wasn't reelected and his successor - being the human counterpart of a proprietary blob - scraped it all in favor of coaxial.