I did call to see what it would cost to have 'real' internet brought out here. They were happy to bring out a fiber line from the nearest town to serve our area. But it was going to cost me around $5k/mo with a 3 year contract for a 10Mb dedicated line. It's cheaper to do point to point relays from that far.

The real issue is that the telcos have been collecting fees for years specifically aimed at rolling out broadband into rural communities and they have done nothing but pocket the money.

I would encourage you to look into this more, if you haven't already. I set up such a connection for my in-laws who live in rural Oklahoma, and it's been a resounding success. It still has issues, but it's worlds better than the antiquated satellite options they had before.

They'll likely transition to using Starlink when it's available as the point to point connection (3 hops for them) is difficult to troubleshoot since I'm a thousand miles away, but if Starlink isn't an option for you for some reason, a point to point connection can be a great choice.

We did talk about setting up a community point to point system but the 'old guys' that run the area are more interested in getting (forcing) more people on to 'city' water than anything actually useful because city water fees are the only thing keeping this town alive.

We recently moved into our one and only choice. We beat lottery odds to get it and it was one more choice than most here have (doz-100s applicants for each listing).

Sorry to not have better info for you, but hopefully someone else will see this and chime in!

Even their standard wall/ceiling-mount AP is weatherproof and comes with pole mount attachments.

Oh what slander. Verizon, for example, has been paying that cash out as dividends.

3Mbps DSL is faster than a T1. That speed also suggests you're 3-4 miles from a CO, so it's not that rural. 3 miles might even make a fiber run possible if you're willing to pay.

However.

I think there's a rather huge sampling bias, because the data is gathered from people who come to Speedtest.com to run the test.

Edit: these stats also exclude people who have no internet at all (which is a subset of speed test users, but an important subset).

I guess the closest would be "In September-October 2019, the weighted average advertised download speed was 146.1 Mbps among the measured ISPs, which represents a 100% increase from 2017 and a 8% increase compared to the average in September-October 2018 which was 135.7 Mbps."

Any sampling bias would apply to all countries, not just the US.

Ultimately it would have still made money for the company, just not enough, gotta get those earnings up!

I also tried satellite providers but they price gouged via bandwidth caps. After about 50gb used for the month you could upgrade to their ultra high bandwidth package, or accept dialup speeds for the rest of the month.

I still have plenty of friends who live in these places, and it really has an impact on life. People still use phone books and have regular cable tv. Only recently have some started to cut the cord.

That said, with the advent of starlink, reasonably high-speed internet in rural areas is now socially efficient, or getting there rapidly. I’m currently using starlink at my rural house and it’s great. It’s obviously still subsidized by venture capital, but there’s a very plausible route for it to continue with no subsidies whatsoever (unlike rural wired broadband).

With smaller towns/rural areas having a much lower cost of living and the expanding ability to work from anywhere with a decent internet connection, I hope we begin to see a resurgence of small town America. Not everyone wants to live in giant megacities.

Romania, Thailand and Chile is top 10...