Between them, Japan's ten regional electricity suppliers own the second-largest fibre-optic network in the country, measuring 160, 000 kilometres and growing.

ECONOMIST: Japanese Telecoms

BSES's fibre-optic network in Mumbai seems to be part of the attraction.

ECONOMIST: The wiring of India

NTL, recognised in the industry as the most innovative company, also has the most comprehensive infrastructure cable, mobile telephony, a national fibre-optic network and a television broadcast network.

ECONOMIST: Hot wires

It has also invested heavily in the crowded market for broadband infrastructure, building a 30, 000-kilometre fibre-optic network that will connect up more than 100 European cities by the end of next year.

ECONOMIST: Internet mergers

It installed more than 20, 000 smart meters, connected them via a fibre-optic network, launched a website to track power use and has started to offer pricing plans that encourage shifting consumption to off-peak hours.

ECONOMIST: Utilities are getting wise to smart meters and grids

When Google announced that it would build a fibre-optic broadband network capable of delivering one gigabit-per-second internet roughly 150 times the average American internet speed to residential users in an American city, mayors lined up to debase themselves.

ECONOMIST: Municipal broadband: The need for speed | The

Work on the fibre-optic underground cable network will start immediately and be 90% complete by 2014.

BBC: North Yorkshire's ?70m broadband project starts

If the latter seems incongruous in a car-dominated nation, it is largely because, shrewdly, he laid optic-fibre networks beneath the tracks he owned to create the giant telecommunications network, Qwest.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Profile: Tycoon Philip Anschutz