Is there anything that prevents rural users from using satellite Internet? No.
People make choices. You want to live in the city, you might not be allowed to have chickens. You live up bum fuk mountain, you might not have take out Indonesian restaurant, or these days, a GM dealer with in a 150 miles.
I used Wildblue for two years. When Alltel put up a tower within my reach, I jumped ship as soon as I could. THAT is competition.
I watch this issue closely because it will impact me eventually. Alltel was eaten by Verizon and if I don't find an alternative ISP in a year it'll mean I get capped to 5000MB a month, which is why I ran from Wildblue.
Caps could be an economy killer, much like +$4 a gallon gasoline. Look at all the applications going online, "cloud" computing, software updates, etc. that require a lot of bandwidth. THIS is the issue to watch.