There is also the idea that undeveloped places need to use oil and gas to industrialize just like Europe, the US and China did. The problem with that is there simply was never enough supply.

Yep, countries in Africa skipped the land line phase of phones completely and went directly to cell phones.

It was a lot easier to put one cell tower every X kilometers than it was to run cabling around the country.

A guy named Robert C. Townsend wrote a book about running corporations. A generally extendable warning he wrote about is you can't grow a business by aping established companies and their historical path to success. Whatever angle and opportunities they exploited often no longer exist. And what they do currently makes sense for them not you.

Skipping landlines and going right to mobile is an example of that.