I’m in a rural town (less than 2k population), and we still have fucking DSL offerings available. It’s wild. 4G expanded out here right before covid, but it’s still really spotty and there’s too many users for the tower’s broadband, so it’s actually kinda slow.
To the users yes, or coax(DOCSIS), how they get to the Internet doesn’t really matter, the challenge for rural communities is how they connect to the urban networks(backhaul).
A lot of rural towns are actually serviced by wireless point to point radios. They have some impressive throughput capabilities but nowhere near what fiber can provide. Also, they are affected by environmental factors like weather or wildlife (https://youtu.be/cZkAP-CQlhA)
ISPs don’t really want to spend millions of dollars to run fiber through mountains to service a town of 4 or 5 thousand people, it would be a poor investment, this is where government programs like above can be useful in then allowing that town or region to have better Internet.
They can probably make the argument that starlink is cheaper but it’s not a long term solution.
Wouldn’t 4G make more sense for most rural locations, its not like its a single house with nothing for 1000 miles in all directions
It’s so rural in my area that you will not get cell signals out here. 4g isn’t an option. The best we can get is either satellite or 1mb dsl.
I’m in a rural town (less than 2k population), and we still have fucking DSL offerings available. It’s wild. 4G expanded out here right before covid, but it’s still really spotty and there’s too many users for the tower’s broadband, so it’s actually kinda slow.
To the users yes, or coax(DOCSIS), how they get to the Internet doesn’t really matter, the challenge for rural communities is how they connect to the urban networks(backhaul).
A lot of rural towns are actually serviced by wireless point to point radios. They have some impressive throughput capabilities but nowhere near what fiber can provide. Also, they are affected by environmental factors like weather or wildlife (https://youtu.be/cZkAP-CQlhA)
ISPs don’t really want to spend millions of dollars to run fiber through mountains to service a town of 4 or 5 thousand people, it would be a poor investment, this is where government programs like above can be useful in then allowing that town or region to have better Internet.
They can probably make the argument that starlink is cheaper but it’s not a long term solution.