The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations (UN) agency, has teamed up with Saudi Arabia’s Communications, Space, and Technology Commission (CST), to publish a report that estimates that the world needs to spend at least $2.596 trillion to achieve “universal, meaningful internet connectivity by 2030.” The upper range on the report’s estimate is $2.846 trillion. Some $1.5-1.7 trillion is estimated to be required for digital infrastructure. Of this, the largest component is five years of operating costs, which is larger than the rest of the infrastructure capex combined. This is the most striking takeaway: that for all the talk of new subsea cables, new satellite constellations, and new data centers, the running costs for these projects remain their largest…