> And those living "inbetween" typically have no money or time for things like mesh, they are struggling with simplier things.

It's just a personal opinion, but I really think this is not the case in reality.

Those guys in the middle of nowhere are the biggest geeks in LoRa networks. They have more practical scenarios, more to gain and better conditions for great distances.

A friend of mine lives far away from me, barely populated area, a big city in between of us. He struggled to get any network traffic, but now he uses narrow antennas to point to particular repeaters and suddenly the whole metropolis is open to him. We talk with acceptable delivery rates (I'm guessing 70%, which is actually very decent in dense area like mine). He is currently trying to expand his local network. His neighbors are less technical, but they have frequent power failures and need alternative way to reach each other.

On the other hand there is A LOT of client nodes and repeaters in my city. Many struggle to reach even a single repeater - hard to access roofs, high buildings, crowded network with plenty of conflicts. This kills motivation for many.