This author must have never been outside of a major city.

Of course the most densely populated areas have the highest broadband penetration. And within bands of population density, investment in new infrastructure is going to where people who can pay for it live, rather than where people who can’t. But a poor person in a city will have an easier time than a rich person in a rural area.

It costs a lot of money to get rights of way and dig trenching for fiber. The further away from an interconnect, the more it costs. (I used to sell fiber backbone connections to companies that would install it for office buildings. Shit’s expensive, mostly because of the digging.)