said by NYDude25:but wiring up the areas is cost prohibitive.
It is true the more rural the area the more expensive it is per household to deploy fiber.
Lets put cost into perspective. There are about 130 million residences in the US. If we assume a cost to wire everyone at $2,000 per household the bill comes to $260Bn. A lot of money to be sure but not too bad spread out over a decade or two. By way of example in todays dollars the cost of the the Apollo program was about $200bn, Interstate highway systems about $500bn and the 2014 defense budget is $750bn.
Internet access today is as important as electricity and telephone were a century ago. Without it citizens are unable to full participate in the society. If we could afford rural electrification a century ago during the height of the depression we can certainly afford to wire up the country with fiber today.
The other thing that has been pointed out is for most of us, even with broadband access, the choice of providers is extremely limited. This gives ISPs incredible leverage over how and by whom the Internet can be used, hence the need for Net Neutrality. This is at odds with the technical specification of the Internet as an egalitarian end-to-end network open to all players. FTTP needs to be split into wholesale and retail components. The physical first-mile fiber network is operated as a regulated common carrier, open to multiple companies that use the physical network to deliver end user services.
/tom