I am not a techician but never understood why there was that big of a problem serving rural areas. The towns have high speed at reasonable rates and they are basically the same distance from any really large urban areas as we are.
A function of cost to deply fiber, head-end equipment and routers versus what they get back from billing you $40/month.
"I am not a techician but never understood why there was that big of a problem serving rural areas. The towns have high speed at reasonable rates and they are basically the same distance from any really large urban areas as we are."
Its really more of a business problem than a technical problem. The towns have enough population density to make it worthwhile for cable companies to wire those areas.
If they want to serve the rural areas, they're faced with running a whole lotta cable for relatively few subscribers.
The telephone companies probably would have never run their cables out their either if it wasn't part of their compact w/ the gvt in return for a monopoly.
The key is density of population. In power grids, com grids, and roads, the high number of customers in cities and urban areas subsidize the rural areas, which cannot generate enough income to pay for creating the infrastructure, though, once up and running, can usually maintain it.
As a very sloppy analogy, look at interstates and four-lane highways. They run where the traffic justifies their construction. The countryside gets back roads, and way out in the sticks, they aren't even paved.
I live in a small town near the coast of North Carolina, and am intimately familiar with lack of services cities only 35 miles away take for granted.