Where I am at (rural area) we have DSL, but service with 768k download / 128k upload costs ~ $50 / month. Not cheap, if one is on a very limited income. So, it could be argued a lot of rural conservatives find decent Internet access hard to afford. I stuck with dial-up as long as possible, but, time is money, and if one is doing much on the Internet at all, the time cost of dialup becomes even more atrocious. That doesn’t even count the download times if one has more than one computer to keep updated, etc. The phone line literally becomes almost continually tied up.
A rough analogy might be the subsidies to the rural electric coops, and rural telecos. Those subsidies might be considered examples of excessive government, but without them, those of us in rural areas who are not wealthy might still not have electrical or phone service.
Internet access is surely not as important as electrical service, but, it is approaching the importance of phone service for many, many people, and surpasses it for some. I find our family / my little business approaching that category, myself.
Granted that in a perfect world, taxes would be low enough that most anyone in rural areas could afford $50 / month Internet, actual cost electrical and phone service, etc. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen.