Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

Naturally, people realize that the farther out they get the worse their infrastructure will be. That doesn't mean the US can't or shouldn't set some minimum standards for what's acceptable. Most people think it's pretty reasonable for every American to have access to broadband. Its in everyone's best interest to make sure all Americans can get online. One nice benefit is that people will be able to spread out a little more and still work from home. That means fewer cars on the road, and fewer harmful emissions hurting the environment. Eliminating the need for commutes will be especially helpful in remote areas because their commutes are often longer than average.

I suspect that at a certain point the US will need to start policing where people are allowed to live more aggressively, but rather than trying to get people to move into dense cities to save a little money in the short term I hope it's used to try to limit the number of people living in a given area according to its biocapacity. Encouraging people to leave areas we expect will be hit hardest by frequent flooding, or fires, or droughts would be helpful too. We waste a lot money rebuilding over and over after predictable events. I can't blame the US government for treading lightly though. People aren't used to the idea of being told that they have to leave their homes and move, let alone being told exactly what parts of the country they have to move to. Probably best to start with people legally immigrating. I'm sure a lot of people would jump at the chance to move to the US even if they weren't assigned their preferred location within in.

I live in a town of ~15k people in a Southern state, and I have symmetric gigabit. Granted, I pay ~$110/mo, but I have the option of symmetric 300Mbps for ~$50/mo. Neither plan has a data cap.

Then again, I chose my home based on the local ISPs' physical network topology. I didn't rely on their service maps, either - I physically went to their installation folks and got a copy of their maps.

Bonuses and other remuneration will, but no executives are getting $5 billion annual bonuses there and ~$million bonuses won't move the needle.

ATT recently did fiber by my house with some kind of machine. It did some kind of U shaped trench, where it drilled down (not sure how deep), then over about 200 feet, and back up. So you only see a hole every 200 or so feet, vs a solid trench. Let them go under driveways and all of that.

A team of 4 guys was able to do my entire neighborhood in a day. Still waiting for ATT to actually wire up the fiber, until them I am stuck with comcast cable (which is fine ,except the data cap doesn't scale with speed, so the faster connections cap cap you out in like 15 minutes).

Subscription fire departments were commercial entities, sometimes run by insurance companies, to which you paid a regular subscription fee. If you house was on fire, they'd extinguish the flames. If your neighbor's house was on fire, and they didn't subscribe, then they let it burn.

Citing a completely different thing does not refute what I wrote. It just illustrates that you don't fully understand the issue.