I live in a similar area and there is no cable to the rural homes. We cut off DirecTV in 2008. We only watched DVDs from Netflix for about a year. Then we got a Roku. We only have DSL, but it is fine. If a lot of people are using bandwidth, we might have a reloading problem, but it isn’t all that often. We now pay under $17/month for 1 DVD at a time and unlimited streaming. We no longer go to movie theaters because I find them uncomfortable due to some slight vertigo and some slight hearing problems. So, we wait and watch at home.
We do have cell reception and we retain a non-mobile landline for power outages. Internet is DSL and I have no problems. I sometimes watch current shows on my monitor via Hulu Free. They have a streaming service, but it has commercials, so I won’t pay for it.
If we like a show, we do an entire season as a marathon. If it’s only on DVD, we watch the entire disc in 1-2 nights. I can have closed captions and the small screen doesn’t aggravate the vertigo, so I can watch the action and FX films I can’t watch on the big screen w/o becoming ill.
NO COMMERCIALS! EVER!!!! No ghostly little icons. No little puppet shows below the screen pitching the next show up. No FNC blaring ALERT! ALERT! over nothing at all. We have a weather phone for emergencies and dangerous weather. I won’t ever go back.
Maybe the thing to do is pressure the cable companies to do "ala carte" pricing. Most channels out there are garbage -- there's only 6 or 8 that I watch (before falling asleep), even though I have to pay for somewhere around 40. I'd much rather pay for a select few that I watch.