One of the great advantages of a last mile rural electrical coop is that they already own/control the ROW (right of way), for the most part, wood utility poles, they have crews of linemen, bucket trucks, spool trailers, GIS people who know how to do aerial ROW planning, etc.
If you have the aerial ROW fully under your own ownership and control the $/km to do rural FTTH is vastly reduced.
There are a lot of efficiencies if this is done as a nonprofit at a municipal/county level entity, one random example, county run fiber PUD calls up the same-county sheriff's department and is like "oh yeah we're gonna need to block a lane and have some traffic flaggers at place X and Y and Z, and we need to shut down avenue C for a while", and everything goes very smoothly.
If you have the aerial ROW fully under your own ownership and control the $/km to do rural FTTH is vastly reduced.
There are a lot of efficiencies if this is done as a nonprofit at a municipal/county level entity, one random example, county run fiber PUD calls up the same-county sheriff's department and is like "oh yeah we're gonna need to block a lane and have some traffic flaggers at place X and Y and Z, and we need to shut down avenue C for a while", and everything goes very smoothly.