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.
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.