I'm fairly certain it's a political issue. There was some good stuff in the Beeching changes, the main flaw was the aim of trying to reduce the subsidies, while ignoring the subsidies being given to cars (which at that point were still pouring out lead into the atmosphere), which is fundamentally a (stupid) political decision.
Rural vs urban is a factor in things like this, but some countries just make a decision to have good trnsport (or health or internet) for everyone, and some countries decide that certain types of transport are for the poor and let them rot. Like many "that's just the way it is" arguments, it can be easily undermined by looking outside the specific country.
The UK seems to have done OK with broadband (at least compared with the US), though again politically motivated decisions in the past have hobbled early roll out of fibre-optic decades ago.
Note I just googled up that article, which seems fairly comprehensive, but I had engineers in the family who were involved and said pretty much the same thing at the time.
Rural vs urban is a factor in things like this, but some countries just make a decision to have good trnsport (or health or internet) for everyone, and some countries decide that certain types of transport are for the poor and let them rot. Like many "that's just the way it is" arguments, it can be easily undermined by looking outside the specific country.
The UK seems to have done OK with broadband (at least compared with the US), though again politically motivated decisions in the past have hobbled early roll out of fibre-optic decades ago.
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-l...
Note I just googled up that article, which seems fairly comprehensive, but I had engineers in the family who were involved and said pretty much the same thing at the time.