The question is who should pay for it. There are plenty of areas of rural America where the houses may be quite far apart - it might legitimately costs tens of

The question is who should pay for it. There are plenty of areas of rural America where the houses may be quite far apart - it might legitimately costs tens of thousands of dollars per hookup to bring fiber. That money will effectively never be recovered - no one is going to pay $500/month for home internet. Keep in mind there are significant portions of the country that don't even have access to water or sewer utilities (wells and septic only) - its just not practical. Giving money to big telco's hasnt worked. I think the best way to cover rural areas is wireless, via local WISPs or local government run ISPs. It would be nice to see some of the low-band spectrum being reclaimed from TV stations (sub 1GHz) go towards these efforts, since higher bands wont be able to cover as much area.