[Weekend Pundit]

Just for everyone's edification:

Fidium (Consolidated Communications) is installing fiber state wide in the areas they serve. They are basically doing the same thing TDS has been doing - building out fiber and then ripping out all of their copper. This does two things:

1. Fiber is future-proof as only the equipment at each end would need to be upgraded to handle ever increasing speeds and data capacity. (Note: In many cases all that's required for higher data speeds is 'throwing the switch' and not equipment replacement...until ever higher speed/capacity equipment comes online that may use different wavelengths than the existing ones being used.)

2. Copper is getting more expensive to maintain and it doesn't have the bandwidth of fiber. Then there's federal law which obligates telcos to share their copper infrastructure with competitors, but they aren't required to share their fiber infrastructure. So it becomes cheaper to decommission and remove all of their copper lines. (The salvage value of the copper is also a factor.)

Mind you, all of this applies to telephone companies, not cable companies. While they provide many of the same services they operate under different rules. If you get the electrical utilities involved in providing broadband services (like NHEC), they operate under yet another set of rules.

Cable has been providing broadband services for years, but depending upon the franchise agreements with the towns they serve there may be limitations regarding who can get service. The cable companies aren't obligated to provide service down roads that have only few homes over a specific distance. If a customer still wants service from the cable company they will need to pay the installation costs of running the cable between the nearest cable node and their home. That can run to thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. Some cable companies are great, some are OK, and some stink.

Then there's fixed wireless which is handled a number of different ways, some by the cell network operators and other by private providers (like Hub66, to name one). Some work better than others and I have no data regarding which is better. One advantage I can thing of is that some of them are 'portable', meaning that if there is cell service there is Internet service. However the costs are going to be high for some of them. I can't speak as to the private providers. (Hub 66 will be serving Locke's Island in Gilford in the near future if everything works out.)

Then there's satellite. Some are OK. Some are bad. And some are really good. All require the customer to buy the ground equipment needed to use the service.

I have used HughesNet in the past and it worked OK, though speeds were limited and it wasn't inexpensive. It had high latency due to the use of geosynchronous satellites. (Latency is a bad thing, particularly for gamers.) It could also be affected by heavy rain and snow.

Then there's StarLink which uses a constellation of thousands of low Earth orbit satellites and can provide higher speeds than other satellite Internet providers. I haven't priced out StarLink recently so I can't hazard a guess as to the cost.