Here we have a suburban metro utility pole that is a piece of ongoing history. It is an old steel one. It started out with POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). With paired customer drops... and plenty of them. From there Cable TV (early 1980s) and their overbuild competitors soon moved in. With more coax and plenty more of their drops, too. Then the phone company went to Fiber Optic service after 2000. Then the Cable TV offered broadband and strung their own fiber along the street. More drops as broadband was offered. Plenty of the disconnected old stuff remaining behind left to rot. Electric utilities in some areas companies starting back in the later 90s started their own communications thing too. Fire alarm systems within the same pole space have been continually abandoning their cables still-in-the-air in favor of wireless call boxes or none at all. And as technology continues, pole space continues to get a bit more limited and crowded as you can see.

Simply why not connect everyone to the same fiber network? It ultimately connects all of us together, anyways...

Ahh yes, communications competition and technology!