In our area, this sometimes happens if the house is in pretty poor condition because it's got 40 years of deferred maintenance when the 80 year old retired farmer dies. So then it's more a matter of the structure not being worth fixing back up to marketable standards, but the 20/40/80 acres it's on is valuable as farm land. I think fiber being available would have very little impact on this. However, there definately are folks in our area that would love to live rural, have animals and hobby farm but still need good Internet to make that an option. The base premise I think you're suggesting is it's not worth running fiber to rural areas because nobody wants to live there anyway. Which at least in central Michigan is wrong.
On Sat, Aug 23, 2025 at 12:15 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: > > In some areas we serve where houses are a mile apart and the nearest town > with a Walmart is 15 miles away, people tell me that when a homeowner dies > (many are in their 70’s and 80’s), they won’t even list the house because > nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere. It will be abandoned, or torn > down to and turned back into farmland. We no longer have small family farms > with the farm family living in a house on the land, because you need to farm > so many acres to make a profit. If a farmhouse is near a town, it may become > a rental house, but not when it’s 10 miles from the nearest town or school. > > > > But I expect some company will be awarded $15K+ each to pass these houses > with fiber. If it takes 4 years to complete, the house might not even be > occupied by then, and in any case, the 80 year old occupant probably doesn’t > care if they have gigabit Internet. > > > > So will fiber make these houses suddenly desirable, and work from home people > will move there from the cities, towns and suburbs? Reviving these rural > areas where the younger generation has moved away? I guess that’s the > vision, I’m not sure I buy it. Well and septic and propane, quarter mile > driveway to plow in winter, but blazing fast Internet, and you can have > horses and chickens. > > > > Will they start building subdivisions out there once fiber is available? I’m > not buying it. Am I wrong? > > -- > AF mailing list > [email protected] > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
