Having spend several years under the thumb of a rural wireless internet service provider, the thought of all my neighbors sucking up shared Starlink bandwidth to stream Netflix in the evenings makes me nauseous. How is it a reasonable expectation that Starlink can really support entire rural areas?
Rural areas in the US have enjoyed disproportionate communications (and infrastructure in general) subsidies since the founding of the USPS. More recently, the Universal Service Fund has spent around $5-8B per year since the 90s, first on phone service then adding broadband. And there are more recent broadband efforts for broadband in the tens of $Bs.
How effective have these efforts been at getting broadband access in rural communities? And comparatively, how effective have they been at giving a revenue source for telcos that they haven't had to really deliver on promises for?
