> With satellite internet from starlink (and I think amazon is attempting their own version?) I don't see how running internet over wires to rural housing could ever be seen as a good expenditure of money. That said, I've always felt satellite internet to be yucky but I'm used to "satellite internet" adding 1000ms to your latency and uploads that actually run over your telephone line.
Depends on what you declare a "good expenditure of money".
The thing about running fiber is that it's not particularly expensive to do. dig trench, install infrastructure, rebury it. Hell, if you have a utility pole, you can omit steps 1 and 3, so long as you're okay with the line being exposed to the elements.
Launching satellites is very expensive to do. There are very high barriers to entry that prevent meaningful competition from occurring for satellite internet providers, which is why HughesNet was crap for all of those years. It took NASA funding a commercial crew program to get a rocket built that could put payload in LEO for "cheap", and there's only two or three options that can reasonably be expected to operate that way.
I'd rather have a lot of competition for installing and operating fiber infrastructure than having an effective duopoly for running performant satellite internet.
I'm under no delusions that will occur in rural areas under the present regime in DC.
As for an exodus from cities and suburbs, no. There's no amount of internet speed that would make me move to a place where there's reduced services and infrastructure in every other category, like schools, hospitals (this is a big one), water, sewer, transit, etc. and there are millions more like me.