Fiber is not available here, and without significant extra pressure from the government, probably never will be.
We've had internet through Spectrum (and before that Time-Warner) since we moved here a decade and a half ago. 100Mbps has been available that entire time. I don't know exactly what all the available speeds have been at any given time, but in about 2017, we upgraded to 400Mbps, which we still have. It's not always the advertised speed, but it's almost always above 100.
I think your understanding of this technology and the practicalities of implementing it may be misinformed or out of date.
I have direct family members that own and operate rural telephone companies. I'm well aware of the practicalities of maintaining technology standards.
Rural telco is heavily subsidized already. To the point where I've literally personally done a run of Internet to a mountain house in the middle of nowhere.
The issue is that bigger telcos like spectrum and time-warner, simply do not care.
There's a reason Google was able to start doing urban fiber installation (which is more expensive than rural installs) and they were able to advertise $100 1gbps speeds 10 years ago. That wasn't all due to deep pockets.
I...did you miss the part where I said I have Spectrum, in a rural area, with over 100Mbps speed?
Like, I can totally believe that there are places where they are perfectly content to shrug their shoulders and ignore entire populations (I actually know of some not too far from here). But to say that as if it's a universal constant is patently false.
Regardless of what the particular geographic parts of Spectrum you're familiar with do, it is demonstrably possible to get 100Mbps+ internet service over coax in rural areas, from them specifically. Thus, to say that you're "realistically looking at fiber" to go over 100Mbps doesn't hold up.
If you want to just bump that up to 1Gbps+, instead, your statement will hold pretty true.
Fiber is not available here, and without significant extra pressure from the government, probably never will be.
We've had internet through Spectrum (and before that Time-Warner) since we moved here a decade and a half ago. 100Mbps has been available that entire time. I don't know exactly what all the available speeds have been at any given time, but in about 2017, we upgraded to 400Mbps, which we still have. It's not always the advertised speed, but it's almost always above 100.
I think your understanding of this technology and the practicalities of implementing it may be misinformed or out of date.