Up here in Saskatchewan, Canada, we have a crown corporation that provides broadband access to the entire province. The legislature has mandated that they provi

Up here in Saskatchewan, Canada, we have a crown corporation that provides broadband access to the entire province. The legislature has mandated that they provide access to a very large portion (90? , 95?) of the population. They are treated as a utility, so maximizing profits is not the benchmark, but rather providing a reasonable level of access and ability at the lowest cost. There's no mention made of race, wealth, or any other demographic. They simply need to make sure everybody* has broadband Internet access. This simple metric works wonders. Whether rich urban areas or tiny rural communities, nearly everyone has adequate broadband access. The speeds aren't equal everywhere, but the minimum levels of service are enough for video streaming, so the minimum standard is plenty to give everyone an ability to participate in our online society. Part of providing this access also includes reasonable pricing. Again, less dense areas aren't always as cheap as the most dense areas, but the difference isn't much. Even in poor, remote communities, you can afford to use a mobile phone with adequate broadband capability. This price equality despite cost inequality does mean that technically the more dense areas are partially subsidizing the less dense areas, but again, the differences aren't that large. We still have private broadband providers in the dense urban areas and their rates aren't much cheaper. What they could save on costs, they continue to charge anyway to increase their profits. This is all to say that you can have equal access throughout a huge area with widely different densities - it's entirely practical and feasible. The only reason it doesn't happen in most places is because it's left up to private corporations whose primary concern is profit. This means they fight over the low hanging fruit of high profit dense urban areas and don't bother to invest in the less profitable, less dense areas. Regulations or other mandates that put availability above profits fix this. You can still run a profitable business while serving everyone equally, but if you only care about maximizing profits, then you will inherently prioritize dense areas over sparse areas. And while that may not be intentionally discriminatory in any legally protected way, there are strong correlations between race, wealth, and population density, which leads to the kind of incidental discrimination that the FCC is trying to address here.