That pays for itself in 20 years and most of those customers won't have better choices in the next 50. The core of that infrastructure will probably oitlive most people on the team. Sounds like a good long term stable business.

$250k per house is an absolutely insane level of mismanagement.

That's actually an example of the very long-term strategies that are common in that industry. There are still active phone lines which were installed over a century ago.