And to anyone who says they is only ONE ISP in your area, you are wrong. Just like the people who say they were only 4 cell phone providers. Yes you may be using the same hardware, but there are plenty of sub companies to get your internet through.
How do we go about finding them, then? Because I've used like, 'address lookup for ISP' sites and it is... drumroll... just comcast. Even a half mile away they get into other providers, but not here. So what am I missing?
If you're rural, your choices go down really fast. Often it is:
* cellular at fairly high cost
* satellite at fairly high cost, "fair use policy" issues, high latency, high startup costs. (Sometimes there are specials on startup costs.)
* wireless ISPs, reasonable throughput, often pretty high cost since (at least around here) they are mom & pop organizations
If you're hanging off a SLIC out in the country, the telco may not think it's worth the cost to put in the cards to run DSL. (Ours would not.)
Before the local cable company expanded to us... we were paying about $80/mo for very slow capped rate using cellular. Don't even think about streaming video.