What was used for long-distance communications before fiber-optic cables?

Before fiber-optic cables were widely deployed in the early 1980s, what was used for long-distance communications? At that time that would have been telephone signals and early digital networks like ARPANET.

I know TAT-1 and later transatlantic cables were coax and needed lots of repeaters, the ones that had bandwidth over ~300 KHz needed ~200+ repeaters despite having really thick conductors. That's why transatlantic calls were extremely expensive in the early days, very expensive infrastructure with very limited bandwidth.

But what about land connections? I don't imagine coax spanned continents, needing this much amplification. Was there any other way of carrying multiplexed telephone signals? I cannot find that information online, maybe I'm not searching for the right things.

I'm also sort of amazed at how affordable the Internet was in the late 90s when international phone calls were still so expensive with the 2 sharing the same undersea cables.