It&#x27;s very possible that it&#x27;s not possible to deploy fiber profitably.<p>Remember, Verizon doesn&#x27;t get exclusive franchise rights to fiber or ISP service. When Verizon rolled out FIOS to areas it thought were going to be most profitable, they ended up not making nearly as much as they thought they would. Turns out people stuck with the cable company. FIOS only get 40% of people in FIOS coverage to actually sign up.<p>That&#x27;s why they stopped their FIOS expansion. It was barely profitable in the easy and rich areas. No way is it going to be profitable in poor and rural areas.<p>In fact, we&#x27;ve always had to subsidize rural and poor areas. The deal was originally that AT&amp;T--which split into the current AT&amp;T and Verizon,etc.--got to have exclusive telephone rights in exchange for making sure everyone got a connection. AT&amp;T was legally entitled to a certain profit margin.<p>Now governments are expecting the same sorts of benefits without giving Verizon and AT&amp;T the same sort quid pro quo. And they are finding out that nobody is going to build a new fiber network to rural and poor areas.<p>In fact, Google Fiber is capitalizing on it. The biggest concession Google gets before deploying Fiber, is that they can pick and choose which neighborhoods get Fiber. So they can cherry pick profitable customers.<p>I think one great compromise is providing LTE coverage without tyrannical data caps. There is no reason to data cap traffic during non-peak periods. And you don&#x27;t need to tether a phone, there are wifi routers that work on LTE.