But they were so bad at marketing (being local monopolies at home), and laying the infrastructure proved so expensive, that they found themselves digging up the roads, pouring money down British drains and seeing little in return.
Investors also lost billions laying down infrastructure for the internet, but benefited the e-commerce, social, mobile and SaaS companies that later put them to use.
That's just for laying down infrastructure; the costs would go up by much more when marketing and then linking up homes and businesses to that network get factored in.
In conjunction with the New Delhi Municipal Council's smart-city programs, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has introduced a land-pooling policy to address one of Delhi's primary challenges: affordable housing that can accommodate its growing population, while laying the infrastructure to implement information and communication technologies (ICTs).
For instance, they literally laid the infrastructure of the Web through a fiber-optic link around the globe.
These three companies, and others in their league, silently laid the infrastructure that underpins Africa's connectivity boom.
As Digital Ocean's CEO Ben Uretsky told me last month, though, it's also a challenging environment for cloud companies, thanks to relatively high import taxes and a relatively poorly laid out infrastructure.
It laid the infrastructure for large-scale recycling projects, including the world's largest indoor composting facility, situated in a former Ikea warehouse.
It is also laying down an infrastructure that guarantees high emissions for years.
The heavy costs involved in laying down the infrastructure caused the government to sell off its stake in 1865.
