Technology

A lot of this started in the US because the big telecom companies were paid a lot of money by the government to roll out broadband in the middle of the country, where customers are spread out enough that they didn't want to bother building the infrastructure, but they took the money and did none of the work. So, these communities did it themselves. Some of them literally burying fiber optics cables by hand through their farm fields.

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago about how this is feasible on the neighborhood level now at potentially better speeds and cheaper than the telecom companies with a satellite connection that people can use via a wi-fi network across the neighborhood.

Definitely seeing that where I live. One of the local electric companies started offering gigabit fiber for $75, where most people were paying a lot more than that for DSL or low quality satellite (which were the only choices before). It's been a huge improvement for those people, and it's forced some of the long stagnant Telco companies to actually compete and start rolling out fiber of their own.

By the way, this is what we call free market.