My dad worked for a rural water utility in the 90s, and he said that at that time fiber was the worst thing they could accidentally dig through. That area didn't have buried power cables, it was pretty easy to cap off a gas line if you accidentally nicked it, and any electrician could splice a telephone cable back together. But fiber was a pain, because the communications company had to send down a special tech to do the splice.

I wonder what has happened to invert that so dramatically.

So it would be a public service to help locate it. Everybody wins.