North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.
Why not? It has been done before. Every developed country went through a period of rural electrification whereby schemes were developed to encourage and/or force electric companies to run wires out into the rural farmland. Internet is the modern analogue for electrification. Those same approaches would work equally well for fiber.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification
The American approach: "The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) was created by executive order as an independent federal bureau in 1935, authorized by the United States Congress in the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, and later in 1939, reorganized as a division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. It was charged with administering loan programs for electrification and telephone service in rural areas. Between 1935 and 1939 – or the first 4½ years after REA's establishment, the number of farms using electric services more than doubled"
I am talking about money already spent and delivered, not future project that will probably be delivered on.
EDIT: Wow, you guys are really bad at admitting your own blatantly obvious biases, aren't you?
There are equivalent places in central Australia, but even though I grew up here I haven't been more than a few hours drive away from the coasts.
I haven't been to North America. Russia didn't cross my mind, but I haven't been there either.
This isn't to say I don't have warped perspectives or prejudices about Africa. I didn't realize the population density is that high in the south, where I haven't been.
Western media only discusses African countries when things go wrong. The only people I know from there are three white families who left South Africa. If you asked me to draw a map of the countries it would be my worst continent.
The original post though really was just based on my personal experience with remoteness.
For what it's worth an initial rush of downvotes (or upvotes) is fairly common on HN; I'd ignore them for the first hour or so. After that you'll probably have a fair idea of the HN consensus (fickle as it is).
People that really care about an issue will sit there and refresh a thread constantly, so in the short term you're mostly knowing what they think about your comment. But they can't vote more than once.
My first comment in this tree was downvoted to -3 within two minutes of posting, but now sits at +40. I actually wasn't sure at first whether it was being downvoted by people for or against Starlink et al. Maybe both.