Second that, although I believe admission to USAA is still limited to active US armed forces personnel or their direct dependents, or dependents of current members.

I too live in former Verizon, current Fairpoint territory, and for us, the change really hasn't meant all that much in terms of availability of broadband, due to the efforts of a few fixed-point broadband wireless ISPs. The largest in my area, Pioneer Broadband (http://www.pioneerbroadband.net/, currently down, just to spite me), covers almost half the state of Maine, and can drop a 1024/256 connection into the majority of that area very easily. This sort of success is not just limited to this one area, as you can tell by reading the isp-wireless list (http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-wireless/). If this is something that you are interested in pursuing for your area, please feel free to message me and I can point you to a few more resources.