Things are of course a lot different than they were 100 years ago. Bringing electricity and phone service to farms and ranches probably seemed pretty important. I'm not sure how a lot of modern coastal urbanites would feel about a very expensive project to bring wired broadband to everyone living on the side of a mountain somewhere today. (Especially given that wireless technologies are an option for a lot of people, if not everyone.)
POTS bills also at least used to have a universal service charge line item, in part to subsidize rural service.
As one of those coastal urbanites, fucking great. Didnt we already pay a bunch of money for that anyway? Even aside from that the internet is great, I'm not going to feel bad about helping to pay to bring it to everyone.
I don't even really disagree. I just see a lot of hostility on here about providing infrastructure for people who aren't in metros. I'm not convinced that in this day and age it all has to be wired. But it's not unreasonable to consider that at least reasonable Internet should be a basic utility service even for very rural locations.
POTS bills also at least used to have a universal service charge line item, in part to subsidize rural service.