Blown fiber was an excellent innovation - by using cheap plastic ducts (pipes), telcos could employ cheap labour to run ducts from the exchange to their valuable business customers and a second team could come along later and using their specialist equipment simply push a strand of fiber optic cable from the exchange to the customer. The first job, including planning, obtaining wayleaves, digging up the road and making good, breaking access routes into premises and finding routes within buildings to run the duct to the cutstomer's equipment was time consuming but fairly straightforward civil engineering taking weeks. The blowing of the fiber is the work of an afternoon, and so a two man team can do two jobs a day.
