The excuse that the US is too big or we can't do it is bull. You did it before for electricity and telephone. It just requires competency, money and an infrastructure that isn't for profit.
Don't get me wrong, the services provided on the infrastructure can definitely be for profit but not the glass itself.
Not completely. There are still tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of Americans who never got electric, telephone, or even water service available in their homes.
Every six months or so there's an article in the Navajo Times about the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority managing to hook up another couple of dozen homes to electricity, but there are still many thousands to go.
There was a photo published during the pandemic of children gathered on top of a hill sitting in the dust and sun with their laptops because it was the only place they could get a cell signal to do their schoolwork.
Tens of thousands of American homes have no running water. I've visited many in Texas, West Virginia, New Mexico, and even California.
Time to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble.
Some have two GPON fiber providers, others have one XGSPON provider, and yet other neighborhoods are served only with coaxial where it was easy to get to in the 1980s when the coax networks were built out, and copper services otherwise.
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> Tens of thousands of American homes have no running water. I've visited many in Texas, West Virginia, New Mexico, and even California.
> Time to get out of the Silicon Valley bubble.
Only 10e4-10e5? Even writing as a Brit who chose Berlin over Silicon Valley when Brexit happened (so I don't think I'd count as "in the Silicon Valley bubble" in the first place), I'd call that a rounding error against the USA population.
Don't get me wrong, that ought to still be an embarrassment for the USA to leave anyone behind[0], and it feels like a bigger embarrassment the closer it gets to the last person; but also, that's a minority of even just the Navajo enrolled tribal members, who are themselves a minority of pre-European American groups in the USA, who are themselves a minority of the USA.
[0] I like the space program, but I can also empathise with all those that didn't care about the Apollo landings because of the rather more pressing issues they personally faced on the ground due to endemic lack of equality; I can't find the original quote I'm thinking of, but this has similar vibes: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1969/07/26/the-moon-hours
It turns out that servicing 100% of the population isn't practical when people choose to live in very remote areas. I agree that it would be onerous for carriers to have to service 100% of the population with any kind of service, but I disagree with the current standard on non-copper services which amount to something like 80% of population within a given metro zone. It biases too hard towards city living, especially as we are seeing more and more people move away from cities.
Rural broadband in America is extremely difficult in most parts of the country, way harder than it needs to be. And don't get me started on WISP vs hardwire, hardwire is the only real internet and don't let anyone fool you otherwise.
Source: 10 years in the belly of the beast of telecom.
Mostly correct. However, not everyone chooses to live in a remote area. The Navajo, referenced above, are among the people who were forced to settle in a particular area, at the point of a government gun.
Moreover, if it wasn't for people living in remote areas, people in the cities wouldn't have food.
We need to be careful with the words here.
Not much in the way of food is produced by people who live in what I would term "remote" areas.
Lots of food is produced by people who live in what I would term "rural" areas.
We can and should and must provide improved communications services to rural areas - I think we have a moral imperative to do so. The remote areas, however, are a different story. If they happen to end up being serviced by e.g. Starlink then great, but I don't think we have the same moral imperative there.
The only agriculture on remote land at scale is cattle ranching, which has the advantage that cattle can move themselves.
Urbanization is progressing.
Suburbia are not sustainable and should not be encouraged. As you just noticed, it takes way more money to service their infrastructure, and they bring in far less tax revenue to pay for it than dense mixed use developments.
Those cabins in MT are not in anything that could ever be called "suburbia".
Suburbia has its problems (many of them), but we're talking about a different class of living here: actual rural living, with neighbors a mile (or miles) away, no infrastructure other than dirt roads etc.
And sometimes (like in New Mexico), thousands of homes are cut off from water infrastructure because some rich guy doesn't want a pipe running under his golf course.
Getting Lumen, Astound, Verizon, Comcast or any of the other vendors who have fiber under 100 feet away to even quote a directional bore is a multi-month process, then the number they give you is a "fuck you" 6 digit price, and they certainly won't let you pull a permit from the city, hire your own contractor to do the directional bore, then pull cable through your conduit.
Or massive government financing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
I huge part of Rural America Electricity is run by Coop's today, often non-profit anyway. Various attempts have been tried for these Coop's to also provide internet services including using Internet Over Power Lines technology, they all fail for some reason.
Also with Telephone and electric build out we did not have the levels of regulatory capture we do today. The US Tax Payer has spent BILLIONS on "broadband" roll out programs to pay for the infrastructure that should have bought fiber to every home including rural areas, the money was wasted on "Fixed Wireless broadband" and other schemes where by the ISP's more or less just pocket the money and there was no accountability by the federal agencies in charge of these programs, largely because they knew they had fat executive jobs at that ISP coming to them
Your implication that government is the solution to this problem by paying for the infrastructure is not based in reality, as government is the problem. Government and government corruption is what stopped fiber from already being a reality.
They seem to be doing fine in Mississippi.
Like everything, it takes political will and community work to keep services responsible and reliable.
When in reality power corrupts and by giving power to government you corrupt anyone that enters the profession.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. --- Ronald Reagan
Better things are possible they just do not come from government, they come in-spite of government
Uhhh.... Most of the nationwide infrastructure was put into place by the railroad companies that were definitely for profit organizations.