Re: population density and the historic wiring of telephone lines
True within certain limits.
Remember the whole reason broadband as such took off the way it did was that the Telco's demanded legislation to fix the 56K limit for modems back when real modems were all the rage. I expect that were it not for that legislation we'd have modems today that would out perform DSL and you could still do it over your POTS line.
Also remember the current cable monopoly is an advent of the 1985-1995 cable consolidation. Up to that point cable companies were all local things that typically had a bunch of antennas sitting on top of a mountain a couple miles away to receive OTA broadcasts and send it down the valley to houses that otherwise wouldn't get decent reception of those OTA signals. Those local outfits were usually barely breaking even at the end of the year. Yes there were some cable access channels and what not, but mostly it was about getting those OTA signals to places that otherwise couldn't get them. Same thing in the big cities, but for different causes.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
