From what I've observed, wires outside almost entirely depend on how new the city is. Old cities have wires outside, new cities don't, that's really it; nothing to do with how rich they are. Palo Alto is an old city. I live in a suburb in Greater Sacramento that's a newer city and it's most certainly not as wealthy as Palo Alto -- not even as wealthy as some of the other towns in Sac -- we got no wires outside.