Seeing this talk about connections...I have to tell you. I also live in the sticks. I am just really lucky that I have the cable company that I do.
About 4 years ago, I ordered a T1 line...before cable modems were available. Forget the fact that it cost $5,000/month but it also took 6 months to get installed. I could actually watch the progress of the installation by going to the town next to ours and watch them run my separate wire from there to here daily. They moved at about 3 telephone poles/day.
Then, cable modems came around and I told the phone company with their $5k/month bill to shove it up their asses.