I think you've nailed it. That's essentially the solution I've been in favor of for years (although I like the idea of local government ownership, but that should at least be an option in your "LoopCo" plan). The ILECS (and cable co's) are a major obstacle--how can you have effective competition when the existing last mile connections are owned by monopolies and the barrier to entry for new competition is essentially infinitely high: no municipality is going to give carte blanche to dig up all the streets to lay out fiber (and don't think that wireless can solve all those problems, either).

If his code (or even the compiled software) is available, it might be useful for creating a digital elevation model which could be used to fill in the voids in the SRTM elevation data.

The place that I work is surrounded by undeveloped light industrial lots and there is a small park with trails just behind the building, so the setting is semi-rural. Last summer, one of my co-workers had put in some long hours over several days. In the middle of the day he decided to go for a short walk on one of the trails. While he was out walking he thought he heard an angry bee buzzing near his waist. He looked around and didn't see anything, but then he heard it again. It sounded like it was coming from his pants! Fearing the worst, he unzipped his pants and pulled them down to avoid the angry bee. Then he heard the buzzing coming again from the pocket of his now-dropped pants and slowly comprehension crept into his sleep-deprived brain. From then on he vowed never to leave his cell phone on vibrate again.

The funniest part was that there were no witnesses to this and he voluntarily told the story when he got back to the office! (And now I'm sharing it with slashdot, which he doesn't read, thankfully.)