Wildblue here. It's satellite or dialup less than 40 miles from St. Louis. A house with 4 geeks does not "do" dial-up--LOL. We also have an aircard that hubby uses when he is on call for work and I can use my cell phone as a modem when I'm on the road & for backup. Snow, rain, or heavy cloud cover are really bad days for the geeky kids so they have iPhones with unlimited plans.
What really burns me is all the money the feds and Missouri gave out to bring broadband to rural areas and I guess since we aren't really rural--we don't count. Terrain is the biggest problem around here. Very hilly, rocky and tree covered. We barely got cell service until 3G got turned on here a year or so ago. There is a Wi-Max repeater less than 2 miles from here but the trees block the signal too much. Clear (which uses Sprint's network) gets 2 bars but they have a ridiculous cap (500mb). Supposedly, when Sprint gets their 4G running, it will be unlimited. Yeah, I actually had a cell provider tell me unlimited means any time of the day or night--not the amount of data--so I'll only believe that when I see it in writing.