10mbps over 1km on a single pair of wires
All these things are related.  Back in the 1990s I worked with others to develop DSL technologies (ADSL, HDSL, VDSL) for telcos.  Why not fiber, some ask?  oh, fiber materials may be sand, but installed fiber is sand, energy, and labor.  Installation costs trump everything - use what you have for the physical medium.While we (PairGain) also made point-to-point private links, it was clear then, and even moreso now that most DSL involves a service provider managing the network - with specialized skills, practices and setup.In the 2010's I was spending time with the Ethernet folks, and in particular industrial folks with large plants.  I ended up chairing IEEE Std 802.3cg which developed the 10 Mb/s 1km technology.  Not really a speed increase - more an application refocus.  As the networking world developed, many realized that converging networks above the physical layer added network complexity and therefore setup and ongoing operating costs...  So we now also have SPE - pure Ethernet at DSL-like distances...Similar tech with different use models, enabling connectivity for whatever...I'm not Al Gore - I won't claim to have invented the internet.  I just an engineer who happened to have a hand in both of these technologies, and am still pleased to see that people use them.