My apologies. I assumed no one replied, as i didn't get any notifications. Just happend back on the forums tonight..
I agree it's a niche market. Maybe ahead of its time, maybe too late, depending on who I ask. Some folks think 5G will be the end of our cares about fiber. I don't personally, because SM fiber is only at the beginning of what it can do. 1G is crazy fast internet, but the very same fiber can already carry 800G. So maybe one day it will matter to have at least 1G, you never know. 5G is about as good as it's going to get. The cap is spectrum.There's just no more to give out. Will we ever see 1G+ average speeds on lte? I doubt it - at least anytime soon. Starlink and others like it have some promise of course.
What I have done since posting is talk to owner/operators at what feels like a few hundred campgrounds all over the US. Some were interested, some were not, some would be open to a third party bearing the expense for a subscription based model. In other words I got basically the same answers I got here. There is no clear answer.. Nobody wants to spend the money on a maybe. And I can't blame them for that.
I'm not abandoning the idea of course. GPON is easier and cheaper than you think. Yes, the fiber outlay is difficult, but it only has to be done once. Fiber truly is as futureproof as it gets. There are also a ton of providers upgrading to 10G or XGPON right now (which doesn't necessarily translate to 10G to the home, just that the shared fiber strand is 10G instead of the 2.5G currently in use), which means there will be a glut of older parts on the refurb market over the next few years. And even if it only serves a decently fast cable internet connection, it could do wonders for reliability and sharing it more evenly/fairly. You'd be amazed how far oversubscription rates really go. I worked with one provider running ~30,000 subscribers on 3x10G links, with another 10G or so in cdn cache happening - and it wasn't tapped out. A single *reliable* 250M connection would be good for most campground uplinks if it were managed right.
As I travel I'll be looking for somewhere willing to try it, and maybe in the process come up with some canned system ready to market direct as a DIY approach.
Until then, safe travels..
Tim