[nine_k]

This differs very much between cities and suburbia.

In a city, you can run a fiber line to a 6-story building and service 30 households by just running some Cat5 cable from a fiber terminator box. And the house probably have enough underground pipes to get into, e.g. electric cable or water pipes. The next house to run your fiber to is probably physically next.

A city-based ISP can run profitably at very moderate prices. Such an ISP can serve hundreds of thousands subscribers over a few dozen square miles. I've user services of several such small ISPs in Russia and Ukraine, with rates about $20 for a 20-30 Mbit line, and even cheaper slower plans.

In a suburban setting you have to run much more cable, install more transcievers, and every house you run your cable to is one household. Then you have to connect to a backbone cable, which may be many miles away (in a city it's usually much closer). This must be much more expensive.