Which is weird because I'm not in a city and live in a small town of less than 20k people
Not weird at all. It’s much easier to run fiber in a small town than in a large city. Cities are denser and more crowded. It’s also more crowded underground. In a city you might have to close streets, you need to be more careful when digging because of all the other stuff underground.
All that makes it cheaper and easier to install fiber in small towns or smaller, less dense cities.