There was a big push to wire up rural areas in the early 2000s. It didn’t happen everywhere, but it happened in quite a few places that can serve as data points. Here in Maryland there is quite a bit of municipal fiber covering the areas Verizon FiOS doesn’t. Some of it has been in place since the early 2000s. Are those communities with fiber doing better than those without it, economically? They’re not doing any better than their neighbors without fiber. The limiting factor isn’t the availability of bandwidth, it’s the lack of desire to hire anyone from these places for remote work. This is not a “build it and they will come” situation. Many places built it. Nobody came.

People have these unfounded romantic notions about fiber and economic development. Here in Maryland, more than 60% of households have access to fiber. Has it revolutionized the economy? Not at all. Annapolis is a small city (pop. 40,000) that has had fiber more than a decade and almost all the tech jobs here are connected to the Navy (and we’re already here). What do people do with fiber here? Netflix. Fiber is not a catalyst for job creation and economic growth. It’s a means for content consumption. That makes it an awful investment of public dollars.