this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Laying fibre is really expensive - in really rural areas it could be $100k+ per subscriber, so you will never see a return on investment for doing that.
The original deal that the telcos struck was that the government would foot a big chunk of the bill of replacing the copper network with fibre even in places where it would make good business sense to do so (and arguably the telcos could have paid for themselves), on the proviso that they also either a) lay fibre; or b) maintain the copper network; in places where it makes no business sense to do so. On balance, the telcos came out well ahead on the deal, but still want to pick option C - none of the above, we take the money and run.
Laying copper was just as expensive. This is a cost cutting measure.
And yet, a local company in my state just ran fiber to 5000 homes in my area for what I told was 1 million. They used directional drilling, it was cheap and easy. Then all the sudden my local phone and cable company “also” put in fiber.
So while I’m in a suburb, I know for a fact these guys are all over the state and growing, including rural (and so is the local telco/cableco). I challenge that 100k number, that’s bullshit telco numbers. The word is unprofitable, it is unprofitable to run fiber when you are the only competitor.
Rural could mean a km out of town there's a few km of houses spaced out by an acre or two along a well maintained road.
Or it could mean over an hour from the nearest town, down first a well maintained road, then a gravel road, then a dirt road surrounded by dense forest and/or lakes/swamp, there's a community of 6 families each 5km from their neighbours.
If the total distance is longer than 100km (60 miles), it'll need a repeater/amplifier, which also needs power.
At some point it becomes more worthwhile to establish a wireless connection, but even then you either need a satellite (at geosynchronous orbit, which has high latency), a constellation of satellites at a lower orbit, or a series of towers with line of sight of each other (or line of sight plus atmospheric bouncing).
We're not talking about the average case, but there are extreme cases that I wouldn't doubt cost a large amount that will never be recouped via reasonable subscription fees.