Well, I'm thinking more broadly than just communications.
Alaska has six times as many pilots per capita as other parts of the US because there are relatively few roads up there.
Some African country addressed one of its issues by created a service for drone delivery of blood for medical emergencies. IIRC, it was both cheaper and more reliable than trying to keep blood on hand in rural areas because blood expires and you need the right blood type.
There was a piece on HN yesterday about the labor and delivery department in a hospital in a town of 9000 people shutting down. Although small, it's a commercial hub for the region because the region is so rural.
I found that the area has a midwife service. Perhaps that's a superior service for that situation. I don't know, but do we really need to medicalize the birthing process in all cases? Seems to me that's not absolutely necessary.
But we seem to generally default to thinking that "big city solutions are best" and when those solutions are a poor fit logistically for some more sparsely populated area or simply financially unsustainable, the default seems to be that service is simply removed entirely rather than replaced with something more suitable.
We also routinely build housing in disaster-prone areas that doesn't withstand the type of disaster in question and then put people in trailers when they inevitably end up homeless. Seems to me we could do better.
Alaska has six times as many pilots per capita as other parts of the US because there are relatively few roads up there.
Some African country addressed one of its issues by created a service for drone delivery of blood for medical emergencies. IIRC, it was both cheaper and more reliable than trying to keep blood on hand in rural areas because blood expires and you need the right blood type.
There was a piece on HN yesterday about the labor and delivery department in a hospital in a town of 9000 people shutting down. Although small, it's a commercial hub for the region because the region is so rural.
I found that the area has a midwife service. Perhaps that's a superior service for that situation. I don't know, but do we really need to medicalize the birthing process in all cases? Seems to me that's not absolutely necessary.
But we seem to generally default to thinking that "big city solutions are best" and when those solutions are a poor fit logistically for some more sparsely populated area or simply financially unsustainable, the default seems to be that service is simply removed entirely rather than replaced with something more suitable.
We also routinely build housing in disaster-prone areas that doesn't withstand the type of disaster in question and then put people in trailers when they inevitably end up homeless. Seems to me we could do better.