> broadband satellite internet, which is the ONLY way rural Americans will ever get broadband internet.
What's your basis for "never" and "only"? If you mean that universal fiber will be "never" (hyperbolically speaking) happen in the US due to subsidy fraud by large incumbent ISPs paired with lack of subsidy enforcement by the federal government, then I would agree with you (again, only hyperbolically).
If you mean that internet access is not affordable enough for poor rural Americans, then fiber is the most sustainable in the long term for ISPs and hence makes it harder for ISPs to justify maintaining high prices. (Comcast and the like will continue overcharging, but ISPs operating within states or municipalities will be able to undercut them.) I don't see how satellite broadband would be cheaper than fiber in the long term for residents.
If you mean that building out fiber is not technically feasible then you would be wrong, considering that rural electrification in the US was almost completely successful in terms of physically reaching homes. (I say almost because there might be a number of households without physical access to electricity, but not on the same order of magnitude as households without physical access to internet.) From the Wikipedia article on rural electrification [1]:
> By the early 1970s about 98% of all farms in the United States had electric service, a demonstration of REA's success.
Note: REA stands for the Rural Electrification Administration.
Rural Americans are disadvantaged because the lower population density means that ISPs need to wait longer to get returns on their investments, but in the long term the situation is the same as in urban areas. From a TechCrunch article regarding broadband access:
> Approximately 28% of Americans in rural areas do not have access to or cannot afford broadband — the rate is 23% in urban areas.
The article doesn't distinguish between people without physical access and people who simply can't afford service. However, there are some Americans in urban areas, not just rural areas, who lack physical access to broadband.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electrification#United_S...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/covid-19-shows-we-need-uni...