I live way out, 8 miles from the main road, in a small out of the way town in upstate NY (population 836) When I moved to my house last year, I couldn't get all my phone lines installed right away, because they had to put new lines out on the road, to handle my needs and it ended up taking 2 months, 4 months from the time the original order was placed.
I already knew there was no cable or DSL available, so I was already used to my dial up. I don't even have cable TV in my area, Time Warner wanted $13,000 to install it
So I have DirecTV...
While I was waiting for my phones to be installed, I got DirecWay, which is a 2 way satellite. The guy came to install it from Albany, which is over an hour away from me, him and his helper mounted it in the ground... when he came to do the software to set it up, their server was down. So I had to wait 12 hours to even activate it.
When I finally activated it.. OH MY GOD... do they LIE! I understand the signal has to travel lightyears to get from one point to another, but surfing was just as slow, if not slower than dial up. I don't know who uploads at 40kb/sec but I can only upload on it, at 2kb MAX. They said download speeds would be about 750kb/sec, the most I ever download at is 80kb/sec. And my signal strength is always about 78. Using the proxy doesn't speed things up very much. It's TOTAL shit. By the way, when I first got the dish, I had 6 PCs networked on it... OMG it was RIDICULOUS!! I vowed to go outside and burn it every 5 seconds. I still have it, on 2 machines, because there's no broadband in my area at all, I have a year contract with them and if I need to download something huge, its "almost" handy.
If you can avoid it, get DSL or cable... but if you are like me and it's not available... DONT MOVE TO THAT HOUSE!! lol just kidding... but I have my phones installed now and I am much happier with them, than the dish.
The dish also goes out when it snows, rains, a cloud comes into the sky, a humming bird hovers over it or a speck of pollen passes it. IT IS PURE SHIT! Then you have to go brush the snow off of it in the winter... fun fun!
Oh and they also want $300 to come take it down!