How about wireless? It is good enough for many cases. Especially on country side without interference from other users.
I would like to offer two stories:
- Czech Republic before 2005 had really bad internet service. Single telecommunication company had monopoly. It only offered expensive dial-up and very slow ADSL. So it gave rise to community driven internet providers based on WIFI. They even made their own hardware based on laser diods. The biggest community network had about 500K users.
- Ireland around 2010 had (and still has) very bad internet access. Goverment gave free license to new mobile phone operator which used exclusively 3G networks. One of the conditions was to provide internet access over phone for montly fee 20 Euro. Many people are now using phone as their main connection (I know case where monthly traffic was 44GB without any complain from provider).
Here in the states, Comcast cable modems/routers automatically create a "public" wifi hotspot in your home by default, so the infrastructure for a large wifi network exists in many places. The catch is, for the public to join the wifi network they must have a Comcast account in good standing. I can only assume based on Comcast's intent to build "the largest public (private) wifi network" themselves and the recent legislative attacks against community/public broadband networks that attempting to create a truly public wifi network using any of the available broadband providers as a backing service would be a Bad Idea. Anecdotally, the wireless broadband providers here are also a joke.
Some cities have wifi providers. It's not common. As for mobile internet, the data caps are the issue. Data for Verizon is $60/mo for 10GB. With Comcast, it's unlimited (or maybe 250GB) for maybe $50/mo?
I would like to offer two stories:
- Czech Republic before 2005 had really bad internet service. Single telecommunication company had monopoly. It only offered expensive dial-up and very slow ADSL. So it gave rise to community driven internet providers based on WIFI. They even made their own hardware based on laser diods. The biggest community network had about 500K users.
- Ireland around 2010 had (and still has) very bad internet access. Goverment gave free license to new mobile phone operator which used exclusively 3G networks. One of the conditions was to provide internet access over phone for montly fee 20 Euro. Many people are now using phone as their main connection (I know case where monthly traffic was 44GB without any complain from provider).