Amen, everything you have said resounds with me, and especially my father. The only service available in the rural upstate NY village is satellite, or a 3G modem (which has better pings, but much worse caps of around 5GB per month). The entire street petitioned for cable to be run (everyone would agree to subscribe), but the cable company's response? Ok, pay us $10,000 per mile of cable we need to run and we'll do it. A few hundred feet down the next road is a house with DSL, but it is unavailable where my father is. Satellite internet is a mechanism that should only need to be used on Arctic expeditions (akin to Satellite phones). Fuck it, and fuck the state of U.S. internet as well. Other countries seem to love taking American inventions and improving them, while America squanders them. Here in Tokyo I can buy a 40 Mbps WiMax subscription for $40 a month and use it anywhere in the city and surrounding areas with up to 10 devices at once. However, my poor father has too hard of a time even talking to me on Skype because of the 2000ms delays and no alternative choice.
To add to what to above poster said, here is an even better tidbit: Back in the earlier days of satellite they DIDN'T EVEN GIVE YOU A BANDWIDTH GAUGE!! You just had to guess, and if you thought you went over because the quality was shit (i.e. half the time in fair weather and 90% of the time in bad weather) you called in to ask them how much you had used.