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Comment by pokerhobo | Hacker News Reader

Anything that runs over fiber isn’t viable for remote areas due to cost of trenching and laying out fiber.

Cook County MN is a little over 3000 square miles, half of which is water, and has a population a little over 5000 people. I own a patch of forest there. It has gigabit fiber service.

The local power company is a co-op because none of the usual power companies wanted to serve the area. About twenty years ago the co-op decided that this whole "internet" thing is probably not a fad, and they started pulling fiber everywhere through their existing utility corridors whenever they had to touch something. It was a good idea. It is _intensely_ rural, yet high speed internet access is now ubiquitous.

I guess it depends on your definition of remote. In my area theres fiber being run all over the place, and it's not like middle of Montana rural, but there was 0 internet providers here before and now there's awesome fiber.

My understanding is Webpass is millimeter wireless point-to-point.

I was wondering how far apart nodes can be.

I'm reading that they can be up to 10km apart - so it seems like something that could be an option for a lot of communities.

Except they were able to get phone lines into most of these "remote" places in the past.

Sunk cost at the same time as electric & water lines were trenched, while the road was built, paid for by the initial developers of the areas (and added to the cost of homes). For this house, that happened somewhere in the early 90s. Digging it all open again is what would cost a lot.

Yes, if there's new development somewhere, they could probably get fiber in pretty cheap, if the developers though that was worth it. That doesn't help anyone else much.

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