Rural and Native American communities, which have traditionally had lower mobile and broadband connectivity than urban areas, are now benefiting from U.S. federal funds being spent on new black fiber-optic cables to address their plight, which will provide service to at least 4,500 homes, businesses, and institutions over the next five years.

Mel Yawakie, vice president of engineering at Turtle Island Communications, who is helping install the new fiber-optic connections, said that in some parts of these communities, service is now available for the first time.

Although they are still dealing with issues such as replacing extremely outdated networks, price increases, long distances, and the distribution of the 5G network, communities that previously had little, or no bandwidth delivered via obsolete copper cables can now offer improved network services. They now receive no more than 25 megabits per second for downloads and 3 megabits per second for uploads.

In addition to government funding, there are new calls for cost-cutting by new technology companies using high-altitude balloons, solar-powered drones, and satellite constellations. However, broadband consultants believe that, despite 5G’s excellent cellular data service, these are often transmitted via high-frequency radio waves that do not reach as far as the traditional cellular signals that still exist in some of these rural communities.

The sources for this piece include an article in Reddit.