[Alupis]

You can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket.

When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone...

For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE.

One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.

[ta1243]

One wonders how we ran electricity out everywhere.

Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.

[hattmall]

That would be the REA, Rural Electrification Act, part of Roosevelt's new deal. Citizens could form co-ops and pay some of their own and get some grants from government. A very big number of those co-ops are now running fiber too.

[s1artibartfast]

Cheaper labor and fewer challenges.

There is a lot of infrastructure where the cost to replace is an order of magnitude higher than the inflation adjusted original cost.

[Sparyjerry]

Above ground power lines make up most of the it. A pole and wire isn't that expensive. Burying is drastically more expensive.

[ta1243]

So run the fibre on the power line

[Alupis]

They do, where feasible. It's still very expensive, and the poles are owned by another entity which complicates things a bit more as well.

No free lunch, as they say.

[rdsnsca]

They are actually running fiber almost everywhere in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Source : https://internet.buildns.ca