Weird, I'm sitting here in a rural area and I have 1g fiber. You may have forgotten that cooperatives exist. It's a common error, since they mainly exist in exurb and rural areas.
The cool thing is that since they often own the power right of way, they can run fiber on it without any change.
The way coops work is that we're the owners, we vote for initiatives, etc. The local power company is now our region's #1 internet provider, hands down.
Which is great for you, but the vast majority of the world doesn't have such strong local organization consisting of members who can afford to pay for big ditch infrastructure.
I'm sorry, but in an environment where sovreignty is increasingly the dominant election issue, fiber doesn't rate.
And even if every house has fiber, there are still many cases for mobile and robust Internet that can't be covered by cellular networks.
The reality is that Starlink needs a competitor. And besides, satellite Internet from LEO satellites is a viable competitive option to fiber, based on infrastructure costs alone. It's all nice to convince slow moving bureaucracies to lay out fiber, but nobody wants to wait the five to ten years for that to happen, when you can subscribe today and get it within a week.
If you get 'free' fiber you are just punting the cost to other members.
It cost me $15,000 to establish my co-op membership 1,000 ft it went to the next guy. Our bylaws require all members to pay 100% of the full unsubsidized cost of extension up front.
This is fairly common. Not a lot of co-ops are built where prior entrants foot the full cost of new entrants.
The real cost of extending fiber can be $10+ a foot overhead or $30+ underground, which is a hard sell to prior entrants as a freebie to toss out.
The cool thing is that since they often own the power right of way, they can run fiber on it without any change.
The way coops work is that we're the owners, we vote for initiatives, etc. The local power company is now our region's #1 internet provider, hands down.