In the early days of fiber optics

In the early days of fiber optics, engineers accepted the limited bandwidth of multimode fibers as a tradeoff because their larger cores greatly reduced the light lost at the many connections in local networks.

Singlemode fiber came into use for long-haul transmission in the 1980s. Carriers needed data rates of hundreds of megabits per second (Mbps) over tens of kilometers, and improvements in splicing and the precision of connectors made singlemode fibers practical over long distances. Today, singlemode fibers can transmit 100 Gbps on up to 100 closely spaced wavelengths, for a total of 10 terabits per second.
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As anyone who has ever had to rewire an old house has learned, recabling can be disruptive and downright expensive if it requires heavy construction.
Multimode fiber remained the preferred option for local and campus networks because it was cheaper and easier to install wherever many connectors and reconfigurations were needed. Modal dispersion remained tolerable over a couple of kilometers for Ethernet that delivered 100 Mbps.