Don I have been out of it for a while but most of our interfaces were not ethernet. Fiber starts becoming a lot more expensive when you need a "S loop" (twinax, RG62AU or whatever) to fiber converter and then converting back. In fact I have never even heard of one. Fiber, overall, was a lot more expensive 10 years ago.
Stringing an 8ga was not really that expensive. In fact we got the first bunch for free from FPL. They were involved in the finger pointing along with IBM, the building owner, the tennent customer, the server vendor and an electrical contractor.
