[QuarterReptile]

Despite the generally stand-offish way parent made his point, there is some validity to wondering why we should provide broadband at such great distances.

I think these conversations tend to get dragged into "think of the farmers" because their work necessitates that they be spread out; accordingly we think of the beneficiaries of these programs as not needing to be held responsible for the hardships of living far away. The problem is, most people living so far apart are there by choice, because they see cheap space to build a big house and have a big yard. They're seeing low prices because we so often supply them with sewage lines, water pipes, paved roads, and other infrastructure, at costs which vastly exceed the receipts from their property taxes.

The people paying for these expensive infrastructure projects are the ones who live in places that pay for themselves, and then some. In many parts of the US, that's the poor people. They can't afford to own big houses outside of town, so instead they get stuck subsidizing those people.

This is particularly painful in transportation, where we take money away from cities who need that money to fund decent transit. Then we send it out to suburban areas to be spent by town leaders who just see easy money for building roads, rather than seeing that putting a 45mph, 5-lane road through downtown is suicide for the finances and vitality of a town.

[ghaff]

I suspect you're right that a lot of the people complaining the loudest about lack of rural broadband are people who have bought a 50 acre place out in the country because they want the space and the quiet. To be fair, they probably pay for a lot of infrastructure like septic but I agree with your basic point.

It's also true that there are some advantages to (near) universal service for many types of utilities, as we did historically with electricity and POTS. That said given existing alternatives to broadband fiber like satellite, I'm not convinced there's a pressing need to provide universal broadband even where it doesn't make financial sense.

[snerbles]

On plots that large, water is usually provided by a well and a local septic tank with leach field handles the sewage - these are typically factored into the cost of constructing a new dwelling.

Bear in mind that many of these residences were built before consumer access to the internet was widespread. You're better off with a terrestrial wireless, as satellite internet has severe latency and bandwidth limitations. Fortunately many rural households in the U.S. otherwise out of economic range of fiber are within rage of local WISPs, line-of-sight allowing.