In rural areas at least it is not going to cost 40k a mile to run coax. Those kinds of areas are almost always serviced by overhead utility lines that already exist, and just running a new line on those poles just requires township permit. It would be probably an order of magnitude cheaper than the buried lines or new lines building required in other circumstances.
Let's take an average over country then apply it in my back-on-the-envelope. Doesn't matter if areas alike Manhattan would probably have 100x the cost of running coax in the rural area (which obviously drives the average).
Then justify the existence of monopolies when in fact purely local providers are actually better able to reduce the costs associated with broadband installation. Those monopolies subsidise central areas by providing way worse service for rural.
I've actually got this issue in London (I didn't check before moving, that our house is literally in the middle of about 5 exchanges). Went as far as reaching providers relating to Gigabit Voucher Scheme or even thinking of asking a friend living about a mile away to provide a wireless link from his house.
While I don’t know what providers have to do to actually access it, the Universal Access Fee is supposed to be there for exactly this kind of reason: providing internet to rural areas that wouldn’t otherwise get it, due to low population levels.
Local cable company wanted $10,000 to run a half mile of cable to my brother-in-law's house. Their other option is some local wireless provider that gives about 1.5mb/s, or cell phones which come in with 1-2 bars of signal.
They offered to split the cost with the other neighbors on the street. One are elderly who aren't interested in cable, the other are very religous and don't own a television or use the internet. IMO it'd be worth it for just the resale value of the houses.
