Discounting next door neighbours who are very close to me, yet further south, I am just under four miles from the nearest house if you travel north from me towards civilisation. Civilisation is Broadford where there is an exchange and lots of bandwidth (as it's a single big route to the north of the island and then on to the Western Isles ).
I am slightly to the north of IV49 9BN. My neighbours are all in a much worse state as you travel downhill to the shore where DSL is 0.8 - 1.0 Mbps (rather fickle). There is a neighbouring village Druim Fhearna a few miles to the east, but that is much further from civilisation and has "no backhaul".
To the north of me there is no line of sight, I would need two wireless links with a long length of fibre between them or possibly three wireless links to get over the moor and down to Broadford. I have often thou about this.
It seems to me that straight fibre is the simplest option. Reliable and no faffing about. If the cost of fibre installations could be brought down by a huge bulk purchase and economies of scale I wonder what would happen.
Desperate locals are already trying wireless line-of-site home-brew solutions, which don't anywhere near meet the 10 Mbps USO nonsense, huge contention, so highly unpredictable, local mafia to deal with, self-appointed captain Mainwarings and no choice of real ISP as these are not wholesaled. One neighbour of mine is providing electricity and land for a node in such a network. Not for me. I'm sticking with Andrews and Arnold.
The government must not forget that people in civilisation have choice of ISP. This must be available to everyone. Having a choice of one p00 local mafia creation which allows the govt to say "box ticked" is not good at all. Same is true for satellite.