At least this is so in Texas. Cable companies and Telcoms offer little internet service in rural areas. Let's get in the way back machine to FDR's New Deal.
Rural Electrification Administration (REA), one of the New Deal agencies created under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The REA was created on May 11, 1935, with the primary goal of promoting rural electrification.[1] In the 1930s, the U.S. lagged significantly behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas due to the unwillingness of power companies to serve farmsteads.
Private electric utilities argued that the government had no right to compete with or regulate private enterprise, despite many of these utilities' having refused to extend their lines to rural areas, claiming lack of profitability. Private power companies set rural rates four times as high as city rates
REA brought light and power to millions of rural people. The phrase in bold because that is the exact situation in the US today. Many countries outstrip the US in providing universal broadband to their people. So what does this have to do with telecommunications?
In 1949, the REA became authorized to provide loans to rural telephone cooperatives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Administration
Until REA was extended to providing telephone service there was very little telephone service to rural people. Something like REA needs to be done to give High Speed/High Data service to all people in the US. But given the current idiots in charge that is as likely as having single payer health care in my lifetime.
The point is, this free market talk is a scam. Left to their own devices private companies will not go the extra mile for anyone. It is only with sensible regulation and government incentive that they will do the right thing.
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