Webpass and similar services work well with line of sight. Even Starlink wants line of sight, but it's generally easier to get that up than across. What happens when a neighbor a mile away has a 3-story home or there's a hill?
With wireless spectrum, lower frequencies effectively travel farther because they don't get disrupted by objects as much. So 600-900MHz frequencies provide lots of coverage that's the backbone of our mobile phone networks, 1700-2100MHz were used to add more capacity in cities and suburbs, and now we're seeing 2.5-4GHz being used to provide new high-speed 5G services (5G+, 5G UC, or 5G UW depending on your carrier). On top of that, there's millimeter wave spectrum. There's a lot of it, but it's also 28-40GHz and going to be blocked by so much. Even if you're near a millimeter wave cell site, your walls might prevent it from working indoors. Lots of things become issues at millimeter wave so it's hard to do it without unobstructed line of sight (including trees and such) or really short distances.
Mobile phone carriers are already beaming internet far distances. They just have limited capacity in a lot of areas and people hate having their home internet connection limited. What we're seeing with 2.5-4GHz spectrum is pretty good capacity with some decent coverage, but we're still just talking a mile or two in a lot of situations. Of course, there are people hacking their T-Mobile Home Internet devices with high-gain directional antennas and really pushing that farther when they have near line of sight. I think we're likely to see this mid-band spectrum become a big factor in rural internet because it has a decent mix of distance and capacity. Millimeter wave spectrum is just hard to do without line of sight and so it often becomes limited to large buildings that an ISP can put a professionally installed antenna on the top of.
It's also that these things take time. If you're one of the big three wireless carriers, you're looking to upgrade 70,000-100,000 cell sites around the country and that doesn't happen overnight. It takes 3-6 years. To really get home internet good in many places, they might need more cell sites to supplement those. Realistically, I think it's a lot more likely that the big three wireless companies will hook up rural areas than Webpass. This is their business. Webpass (and others like Starry and NetBlazr) are somewhat limited because they don't have the spectrum to cover larger areas or even within cities where they don't have a tall building to give them line of sight. They also don't have the money or workforce to deploy as quickly as the wireless carriers (yes Google has money, but they're not going to spend $15B a year when they don't have the spectrum to create a viable rural strategy; the big three are spending that kind of money because they have the spectrum and network and potential to expand into home internet).
Wireless has a lot of promise, but the lower frequency you go the less spectrum there is available and the higher frequency you go the less distance you're going to get and the more you need line of sight. The big three wireless carriers have the lower frequency spectrum and network to start providing more and more home internet in the future. We're just at the first point where the big wireless carriers are starting to see excess network capacity (beyond what their mobile users will eat up) which is why it didn't happen much before.
With wireless spectrum, lower frequencies effectively travel farther because they don't get disrupted by objects as much. So 600-900MHz frequencies provide lots of coverage that's the backbone of our mobile phone networks, 1700-2100MHz were used to add more capacity in cities and suburbs, and now we're seeing 2.5-4GHz being used to provide new high-speed 5G services (5G+, 5G UC, or 5G UW depending on your carrier). On top of that, there's millimeter wave spectrum. There's a lot of it, but it's also 28-40GHz and going to be blocked by so much. Even if you're near a millimeter wave cell site, your walls might prevent it from working indoors. Lots of things become issues at millimeter wave so it's hard to do it without unobstructed line of sight (including trees and such) or really short distances.
Mobile phone carriers are already beaming internet far distances. They just have limited capacity in a lot of areas and people hate having their home internet connection limited. What we're seeing with 2.5-4GHz spectrum is pretty good capacity with some decent coverage, but we're still just talking a mile or two in a lot of situations. Of course, there are people hacking their T-Mobile Home Internet devices with high-gain directional antennas and really pushing that farther when they have near line of sight. I think we're likely to see this mid-band spectrum become a big factor in rural internet because it has a decent mix of distance and capacity. Millimeter wave spectrum is just hard to do without line of sight and so it often becomes limited to large buildings that an ISP can put a professionally installed antenna on the top of.
It's also that these things take time. If you're one of the big three wireless carriers, you're looking to upgrade 70,000-100,000 cell sites around the country and that doesn't happen overnight. It takes 3-6 years. To really get home internet good in many places, they might need more cell sites to supplement those. Realistically, I think it's a lot more likely that the big three wireless companies will hook up rural areas than Webpass. This is their business. Webpass (and others like Starry and NetBlazr) are somewhat limited because they don't have the spectrum to cover larger areas or even within cities where they don't have a tall building to give them line of sight. They also don't have the money or workforce to deploy as quickly as the wireless carriers (yes Google has money, but they're not going to spend $15B a year when they don't have the spectrum to create a viable rural strategy; the big three are spending that kind of money because they have the spectrum and network and potential to expand into home internet).
Wireless has a lot of promise, but the lower frequency you go the less spectrum there is available and the higher frequency you go the less distance you're going to get and the more you need line of sight. The big three wireless carriers have the lower frequency spectrum and network to start providing more and more home internet in the future. We're just at the first point where the big wireless carriers are starting to see excess network capacity (beyond what their mobile users will eat up) which is why it didn't happen much before.