The 95th Meridian and Network Cost

The 95th Meridian is important in the United States. West of the 95th Meridian, agriculture is not possible without irrigation. For most of the land area west of the meridian, water is a major issue. And with a few exceptions on the west coast, most of the U.S. west of the meridian is highly rural, contains much forest, uncultivated desert or range land, and relatively few people. 

source: U.S. Department of Agriculture 

In fact, most people live on just six percent of the U.S. land surface, according to the USDA. About 94 percent is unsettled or lightly populated, including mountains, rangeland, cropland and forests. 

All that has direct implications for the cost and speed of building networks. Dense urban networks cost the least, on a per-location basis, while rural networks cost the most. Also, incentives to build and operate networks are strongest on six percent of the land surface, and challenging on as much as 94 percent of the land surface. 

In just about any instance, in any market, 80 percent of the revenue might be generated by 20 percent of the accounts, locations or use cases. Ericsson studies show that just 30 percent of cell sites support 75 percent of all traffic on the network, for example. 

So it should come as no surprise that the cost of U.S. rural infrastructure can be an order of magnitude higher than for denser urban infrastructure. 

That is not to say all of the hard-to-serve areas are west of the 95th Meridian. Just most of them.