Comment by Tostino
4 hours ago
I'm not saying for you personally it is financially viable. I am saying that these companies have zero excuse to say that providing that service to every single American isn't financially viable. They were already paid to do that, and simply took the money and didn't provide the service. We could still hold them to account if there was any political will to do so.
It's hard for the economics not to work out.
It might be an eye popping number that it costs $3k to run optic fiber to a rural house but the service costs $100 a month and brings in $3600 in revenue in 3 years. The fiber is likely to be good for 50+ years so they only way this is not "financially viable" is that capital is saving it's powder to invest in bubbles. That is, we are already living in an "Atlas Shrugged" world where capital demands unreasonably high rates of return on investment for physical world investments.
I was reading an article in The Economist about how China would like to have its own Starlink but has the problem that it was not shy to invest in fiber so it has already cannibalized its own domestic market and foreign markets either don't trust China or are too poor.