It was basically up to the states this time around, they could allocate BEAD funds more or less as they wanted and absolutely build fiber out to the vast majority of residences (look at North Dakota, it's evidently possible) through models like municipal fiber.

Ultimately it's a political issue more than anything else, Americans just can't get anything done anymore, politicians would rather enrich themselves and voters only care about the culture war.

there's nothing better than optic fiber because nothing can be faster than light

Edit: as comment below says optic fiber isn't actually faster, but still better because it has lower packet loss, is cheaper and not owned by elon musk

That's...not really a cogent argument.

Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).

Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum --- light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they're just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don't call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.

If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don't use fiber, you probably use microwaves: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/

Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that "physics bandwidth" tends to care about fractional bandwidth ("delta frequency divided by frequency"), whereas "information bandwidth" cares about absolute bandwidth ("delta frequency"), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz --- so a tiny fractional bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.

Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum — light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum

I'm a complete laymen when it comes to this, but this sounds like it would pertain to latency rather than bandwidth. I expect that fiber would have a much higher data capacity than satellite.

there's nothing better than optic fiber because nothing can be faster than light

Edit: as comment below says optic fiber isn't actually faster, but still better because it has lower packet loss, is cheaper and not owned by elon musk

Do you mean works or falls out of the sky routinely to litter the earth? We build lots as far as smaller ISPs go. You just don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

Starlink is designed to demise on re-entry. It's a core criteria.

That's...not really a cogent argument.

Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).

Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum --- light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they're just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don't call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.

If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don't use fiber, you probably use microwaves: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/

Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that "physics bandwidth" tends to care about fractional bandwidth ("delta frequency divided by frequency"), whereas "information bandwidth" cares about absolute bandwidth ("delta frequency"), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz --- so a tiny fractional bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.

I wish there was more municipal fiber. It's absolutely insane that the big ISPs fight it and often win.

Pros of fibre:

• cheaper: much cheaper than copper or satellites.
• faster: latency is faster than copper and wireless (to satellite).
• very high bandwidth: theoretically unlimited. In practice a commercial fibre optic multicore run for domestic use at street/town level will be pushing ~800Gb/a, and this number generally doubles every few years as tech advances. The new spec being finalised is 1.6Pb/s.
• high stability: does not give a crap if it's cloudy, foggy, or rainy, or if the trees have wet leaves, or if it's just a very humid day, unlike all forms of outdoor wireless comms. Does not care about lightning strikes, as copper does.
• long life: 25 to 30 years life quoted for most industrial in-ground fibre, but real life span is expected to be much longer based on health checks on deployed cable in countries with large fibre rollouts. Upgradable without replacing the medium throughout that lifecycle.
• lowest power usage: fibre optic uses far less power and energy than 4G 5G and satellite infrastructure.

Cons of nationwide fibre:

• billionaires who launched thousands of satellites make less money.
• monopoly Internet Service Providers won't be able to fleece their cable internet customers some of the highest charges for net access in the world.
• people will tell you "uhm acktually wireless internet is the speed of light also as it communicates via photons", but will usually leave out all of the interference it experiences.

There's nothing better than fibre optic infrastructure for general public Internet connectivity. Wireless/satellite should only be a last resort for remote users.

Shouldn't the 5G covid brain control serum chip nanobot people be upset about this?

This has got a scary amount of up votes, especially considering that this is the 'technology' community.

Radiowaves are also 'light' and infact as many others have mentioned so eloquently, light travelling through air is faster than light travelling through glass. The reasons why fiber is better are - better stability because of lower packet loss and interference, better efficiency because of lower attenuation and losses due to diffusion, reflection, and other processes when traveling in a fiber optic cable, and more bandwidth because we can use more favourable frequencies in optic cables (@qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website explains it perfectly in another reply to the parent comment)

I miss dial up. Like local providers with 2 or 3 numbers to try.

scary amount of up votes

Eh, I think it's fine. Fiber is faster (higher bandwidth, lower latency) than light transmission due to the factors you mentioned, so whether it technically transmits slower than light is largely irrelevant.

scary amount of up votes

Eh, I think it's fine. Fiber is faster (higher bandwidth, lower latency) than light transmission due to the factors you mentioned, so whether it technically transmits slower than light is largely irrelevant.