Historically in the US, some portion of Bell installations were designed to be resistant to attack. But it comes at large expense for construction and maintenance. Underground facilities also bring increased risk of flooding.
Competition and deregulation and lack of attacks leads towards less robust installations to reduce costs. Geographically redundant installations help as long as all installations aren't targetted; and are valuable for operational concerns other than just attacks.
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Historically in the US, some portion of Bell installations were designed to be resistant to attack. But it comes at large expense for construction and maintenance. Underground facilities also bring increased risk of flooding.
Competition and deregulation and lack of attacks leads towards less robust installations to reduce costs. Geographically redundant installations help as long as all installations aren't targetted; and are valuable for operational concerns other than just attacks.
Cold War era definitely resulted in a lot of comms infrastructure being hardened against attack.
not even a decade ago for an example (NSVLTNMT):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nashville_bombing