Not really. Starlink wiped out the value of shitty DSL lines and microwave links to rural spots. It’s not a substitute for fiber though.
When my friend was looking at places in the middle of nowhere along the coast of Oregon to move to now that his kids are off to college, Starlink completely changed the calculus so he didn’t have to worry about connectivity at all.
My brother recently got decent wired or fiber broadband at his house in rural Maine. But he had Starlink for a while before that and it was a game-changer. You could actually do all the normal Internet things. The prior wired connections got 1Mbps down with a tailwind and the subsequent mobile hotspots had very restrictive data caps and also were still pretty slow.
I don't know the details. It's not that rural. It's a few miles from Ellsworth (small city) but it's down a private road. They had sorta broadband part-way down the road already. I think it's Verizon they have but am not sure. They were actually happy enough with Starlink but they switched when this became available.
Thanks! Always curious to hear more about this topic, trying to get fiber pulled to a property in Old Forge NY that currently is using StarLink (which is fine for now).
As far as I know it "just happened." Presumably whatever provider decided that it would be profitable to extend Internet to a group of homes that are decidedly not low income. Maybe they had some requests from homeowners.
I'm not even sure why my brother switched. It was presumably cost as they were perfectly happy with Starlink. (Which, as I wrote, I was perfectly happy with as well the times I was up there.)
Pre-Starlink, lack of decent Internet options were increasingly an issue with the people along the road. Not that I go up there a lot but I couldn't have worked remotely from up there pre-Starlink.
