SpaceX can't scale regionally, they have to scale globally. The nature of their satellites is that if they want to accommodate 2x as many users in a city they have to double their capacity.

The push I'm discussing is the cost to get a baseline internet out there for 10k people per 100 miles.

I'm assuming the cost per last mile is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. If that's true right now the majority of our population is in cities so SpaceX will have trouble reaching them.

That's the core of my point. For Starlink to hit everyone in a city they'd have a huge amount of wasted capacity in rural areas.

Satellites also degrade naturally over time. They have a set lifetime and don't all last that long. Cables under the ground tend to last longer even if they require spot fixes. I'm assuming that bandwidth wise, the cables are more efficient at least until getting manufactured equipment to space becomes even more cheaper.