Cost is in digging the hole, not the cable capacity.
Technology moves the capacity per fiber up as well.
So when you use a circuit, then it is used. When you need more capacity, you just lite up more fibers. You may only be using 5% of the cable capacity at any one time.
Not true with a pipeline. What you got is all you got. So you have a fixed pipeline 'bandwith' and you can trade energy based on fixed constraints.
Enron ran up with the oil price spike, and crashed when energy prices crashed. To save themselves they branched out to fiber. Treated it like a pipeline ... bad move.
Should have stuck with energy, at least they understood it.
The rest appears to be fraud IMHO.
tarpon
I agree this is what toppled Enron. Deriatives with commodities is a very tricky business and Enron had no clue about fiber-optics and bandwidth. Not to mention all that ad revenue on those stupid "why?" commercials. They made everything so complicated, no one could understand what was going on, probably including themselves.
I'm sure there is fraud involved and collusion with the auditors. White collar crime. The political aspect is much ado about nothing except all the sweetheart deals Clinton's administration arranged for Enron: India, Mozambique, etc. Wish that would come out but probably won't since it involves Democrats and not Republicans.