> Rural is complicated. You have more distance between subscribers, but it's much more likely to just be grass which you can mole plough into for about a tenth of the cost per metre of digging up sidewalk.

You've also most likely got existing telephone poles that you can dangle your fibre off, and (in farming country at least) you've probably got some handy grain silos to nail a microwave link to.

Here in rural NE Scotland there are several altnets, and it's not uncommon to see a massive cluster of microwave dishes and yagis hanging off the corner of a barn somewhere.