The goal seems to be to keep people in rural areas ignorant and/or sell more starlink terminals

It's easy to funnel money from the rubes. It was only 2 years ago that I learned some churches will automatically withdraw tithes from your bank account and they encourage you to set up "direct deposit" with them.

The entire economic model of these loons is built on the same principle: anything you use regularly, for "free" or built with taxpayer money, should instead become a subscription service you have to pay for, to a cabal of rich sociopaths. In the meantime, the actual free option is brain rotting propaganda to keep you voting for the rich sociopaths so they can repeat step 1. See: Fox News.

Churches and other religious congregations in the US are NOT funded with taxpayers money (at least, pending Supreme Court decision on the Kansas taxpayer supported Catholic school), and pastor salary and building upkeep are very real costs. If a family values the community having employee(s) and a building, and doesn’t want the hassle of other payment options, automatic debits are a good option to have available.

Things that actually are funded with taxpayer money, yes, they should be free. The Project 2025 plan to kill NOAA so weather forecasts will only be available to subscribers of private companies is incredibly destructive to such a huge number of people, and yes, this broadband decision is in that same awful category.

Isn’t the fact that they get a tax credit kinda means they get that money through?

I’m not sure what you mean by “tax credit”. Religious congregations do not receive payments of any kind from the government. They do not pay taxes on their income (donations/tithes), so each donor’s money goes farther, and donors, if they itemize on their tax returns (pretty rare with how generous the standard deduction has become) have tax incentive to give generously. But without donations, there won’t be any building or full time officiant.