Its very easy to forget how quickly the amenities we have in the coastal cities fade away as you move inland. Terrain and population certainly have something to do with this of course, but to take an example there are huge swathes of Pennsylvania less than 100 miles from Philly that have no cell service, are dotted with towns of under 5000 residents, and, unless local people get involved, no chance of decent Internet. Moreover it was not cost effective for the major operators to come and deliver service to such low numbers of residents.
However due to a quirk of the US market, these towns often have tiny little orgs that once served as the town phone company, or electric co-op (think 1930s farmers getting together to light up their barns).
These are the orgs that are best placed to deliver broadband to their communities. That said, they need to get away from "more speed, yay" (because a later entrant with deeper pockets could crush them with a price war) and more into "we're your local help, the call center is 3 miles away not 15,000, and we can deliver a whole experience, like wifi, home security, scam protection etc".
Its very easy to forget how quickly the amenities we have in the coastal cities fade away as you move inland. Terrain and population certainly have something to do with this of course, but to take an example there are huge swathes of Pennsylvania less than 100 miles from Philly that have no cell service, are dotted with towns of under 5000 residents, and, unless local people get involved, no chance of decent Internet. Moreover it was not cost effective for the major operators to come and deliver service to such low numbers of residents.
However due to a quirk of the US market, these towns often have tiny little orgs that once served as the town phone company, or electric co-op (think 1930s farmers getting together to light up their barns).
These are the orgs that are best placed to deliver broadband to their communities. That said, they need to get away from "more speed, yay" (because a later entrant with deeper pockets could crush them with a price war) and more into "we're your local help, the call center is 3 miles away not 15,000, and we can deliver a whole experience, like wifi, home security, scam protection etc".
I feel like with cancel culture there should be some relationship with local telecoms and local credit unions.